Chapter III
The
procedural approach
1. For many years, syntax
and semantics were studied with little regard for the ways people use grammar
and meaning in communication. The use of language was relegated to the domain of
pragmatics and left largely
unexplored. In a procedural approach, however, all the levels of language
are to be described in terms of their utilization. Pragmatics is then the domain
of plans and goals, and questions of use are freely treated in syntax and
semantics as well. Our notions of “cohesion” and “coherence” can be
helpful in studying a text only if they deal with how connections and relations
are actually set up among communicative occurrences. The concerns of pragmatics
are dealt with by exploring the attitudes of producers (“intentionality”)
and receivers (“acceptability”), and the communicative settings
(“situationality”).
2. Linguists of all persuasions seem to agree that a
language should be viewed as a system:1
a set of elements each of which has a function of contributing to the workings
of the whole. This definition is so general that its implications for language
research can be highly diverse. For example, as noted in II.19, early study
entailed extracting systems of minimal units for each aspect of a language; each
unit had the function of being distinctive from all the others. However, no one
would equate this kind of system with the operations of communicating: people
are not combining distinctive units in any direct or obvious way. Indeed,
empirical tests show that many abstract distinctions are not perceptibly
maintained in real speaking and are recoverable only from context (cf. Pollack
& Pickett 1964; Woods & Makhoul 1973; Walker (ed.) 1978).
3. One’s outlook on an object of study depends upon the
scientific tasks to be accomplished. The systemization
of the object (discovery or imposition of a system in some domain of study)—a
notion advanced especially by Carl Hempel—proceeds on the basic assumption
that occurring manifestations are controlled by orderly principles rather than
by randomness. The description of
an object requires that we identify those orderly principles to the extent that
the classification of samples can be objectively and reliably performed. The explanation
of the object, on the other hand, requires that we uncover the principles
whereby the object assumed the characteristics it has and whereby the observable
samples were created and used. A description of a language may be given quite
independently of any stated or implied explanation. Indeed, descriptions can be
simplified by deliberately excluding many considerations which an explanation
would have to address.
4. A case in point is the opposition between modularity,
where the components of a model are viewed as independent of each other, and interaction, where the components are seen to interlock and
control each other (cf. Sussman 1973: 12f.; Winograd 1975: 192). Modular systems
are far easier to design and keep track of, since additions or modifications
affect only specific elements; in exchange, however, system operations are
vastly cumbersome (cf. Levesque & Mylopoulos 1979: 94). Therefore, the
largely modular models of language developed in both descriptive structural
linguistics and transformational grammar would provide only very inefficient
operating systems for the use of language in real time. Language users would
appear to be floating in an endless sea of minute structures on different
language levels; how syntax and grammar interact with meaning and purpose
remains a mystery.
5. There can be no doubt that real communicative
behaviour can be explained only if language is modelled as an interactive system
(cf. Walker (ed.) 1978). The correlation between levels cannot be ignored or
reserved for some after-the-fact phase of “interpretation”. Tests show that
a language model in which syntax is autonomous cannot function in real time
because of combinatorial
explosion: an immense over-computation of alternative structures and
readings that run into astronomically vast operation times.3 The
understanding of the road sign [1] (‘slow children at play’), to take a very
mild example, would demand too much processing if it had to be analysed
independently of the context where it occurs (cf. I.19). The production and
reception of a text of greater length, if they had to be done without
interaction of language levels and cognitive or situational factors, would seem
to be little short of a miracle.
6. Considerations of this kind have led to the inception
of a procedural approach to the study of texts in communication. Here, the
discovery of units and structural patterns, though still a central activity of
investigation, is not a goal in itself. Instead, we are concerned with the
operations which manipulate units and patterns during the utilization of
language systems in application (cf. II.5). The TEXT figures as the actual
outcome of these operations. Hence, a text cannot be explained as a
configuration of morphemes or sentences (cf. Chapter II): we would rather say
that morphemes and sentences function as operational units and patterns for
signalling meanings and purposes during communication. The thoroughness with
which text users actually organize and utilize morphemic and syntactic materials
should be an issue for empirical research under realistic conditions, rather
than an a priori assumption dictated by a particular theory.
7. As Manfred Bierwisch (1966: 130) notes, there is no
definite constraint on the number of abstract grammars which could be set up for
a language. It has been customary to argue in favour of one grammar over another
on the basis of criteria such as simplicity, consistency, and generality. In the
procedural approach, however, the decisive criteria must include operationality
and human plausibility.4 The intuitions of linguists can be no more
than a heuristic, and do not constitute primary data (see discussion in Crystal
1971: 105ff.; Spencer 1973; Ringen 1975; Snow & Meijer 1977). The validity
of theories and models must be demonstrated from natural human activities.
8. Research along these lines entails a shifting of
priorities among the issues to be explored.5 For example, the
distinction between sentences and non-sentences is absolutely indispensable for
an abstract grammar, since it decides what the grammar should or should not
allow. But if human language users are in fact demonstrably unable to make such
a distinction consistently as suggested by the research reviewed in VI.23ff,
grammaticality of sentences is only a default
in a theory of language as human activity, that is, something assumed in absence
of contrary specification (cf. III.18). A presentation is likely to be rejected
as a non-text only if the standards of textuality are so strongly defied (e.g.
by total absence of discoverable cohesion, coherence, relevance to a situation,
etc.) that communicative utilization is no longer feasible (cf. I.3). Such a
borderline can depend on factors outside the text itself, e.g., tolerance and
prior knowledge of the participants present, or type of text in use.
9. As the distinctions of sentence/non-sentence and
text/non-text lose importance, the gradations of efficiency, effectiveness, and
appropriateness gain (cf. 1.23). Those factors control what people say at least
as much as do the abstract rules of grammar and logic. Procedurally, efficiency
contributes to processing ease, that is, the running of operations with a light
load on resources of attention and access. Effectiveness elicits
processing depth, that is, intense use of resources of attention and access on
materials removed from the explicit surface representation.6 Appropriateness
is a factor determining the correlation between the current occasion and the
standards of textuality such that reliable estimates can be made regarding ease
or depth of participants’ processing. Notice that efficiency and effectiveness
tend to work against each other. Plain language and trite content are very easy
to produce and receive, but cause boredom and leave little impression behind. In
contrast, creative language and bizarre content can elicit a powerful effect,
but may become unduly difficult to produce and receive. Hence, appropriateness
must mediate between these opposed factors to indicate the proper balance
between the conventional and the unconventional in each situation.
10. The quality of a text as efficient, effective, and
appropriate would be sensitive to the extent of processing resources expended
upon its production and reception (cf. III.28). In principle, there is no
cut-off point where production is definitively accomplished, but at most a threshold
of termination where the producer finds the outcome satisfactory for the
intended purpose (cf. Flower & Hayes 1979: 17). Similarly, the receivers’
judgement of text quality will affect the extent of resources they are disposed
to expend on processing the presentation. There would be no absolute end to
reception, but rather a threshold of termination where utilization appears
satisfactory. In principle, someone else could come along and revise the text
still further or analyse it yet more thoroughly.7
11. The considerations we have raised suggest how
difficult it would be to limit the study of texts to the artefacts of speech or
writing alone. Those artefacts are inherently incomplete when isolated from the
processing operations performed upon them. If we view a text as a document of
decision, selection, and combination, then many occurrences are significant by
virtue of the other alternatives which might have occurred instead. Frequently,
the basic organization of the language (e.g.1ts regularities of sound, grammar,
vocabulary, etc.) provide no decisive guidelines about what should be chosen. We
must constantly seek to discover and systemize the motivations and strategies
according to which the creation and utilization of texts are kept in operation.
12. On the other hand, we must guard against allowing the
text to vanish away behind mental processes. Recent debates over the role of the
reader point up the dangers of assuming that text receivers can do whatever they
like with a presentation.8 If that notion were accurate, textual
communication would be quite unreliable, perhaps even solipsistic. There must be
definitive, though not absolute, controls on the variations among modes of
utilizing a text by different receivers (cf. III.16). Beaugrande (1980a)
proposes that the text itself be viewed as a system, being a set of elements
functioning together.9 Whereas a language is a virtual
system of available options not yet in use, the text is an actual
system in which options have been taken from their repertories and utilized in a
particular structure (relationship
between or among elements). This utilization is carried out via procedures of actualisation.10
13. Since descriptive structural linguistics and
transforma-tional grammar are both preoccupied with virtual systems, little
research was expended on actualisation procedures until recently. Even at this
early stage of inquiry, it now seems clear that actualisation is organized in
ways which are not directly applicable to virtual systems. For instance, there
seems to be a very heavy interdependency of decisions and selections, both
within one level and among different levels. This interdependency exerts
powerful controls on possible variations in utilizing a single text. If one
participant adopted an unconstrainedly idiosyncratic outlook on textual
occurrences, communication would be seriously damaged.
14. From here, Beaugrande (1980a) concludes that a text
constitutes a cybernetic system
which continually regulates the functions of its constituent occurrences.
Whenever a textual occurrence falls outside the participants’ systems of
knowledge about language, content, and purpose, the stability of the textual system is disturbed and must be
restored by regulative integration of
that occurrence, e.g. via additions or modifications to one’s store of
knowledge. Text utilization is blocked only if regulative integration fails,
e.g.1f irresolvable discrepancies persist. Under normal conditions, participants
uphold systemic stability in maintaining a continuity of cognitive experience by discovering the
relations between each meaningful occurrence and its context.11 Even
where there are several possible relations that might be constructed, some are
more satisfactory or probable than others and will therefore be given preference.12
To the extent that preference knowledge is shared by a communicative community
(or indeed, serves to identify such a community), the processing outcome
of a particular text will be quite similar among all members of the community.
Any noticeably idiosyncratic outcome will elicit special regulation, so that in
time, the language user becomes aware of community preferences.
15. The awareness of community preference knowledge is by
no means a compulsion to conform to it. On the contrary, a text whose format and
content were entirely in conformity with established knowledge would possess an
extremely low degree of informativity in the sense of I.17f. (cf. also
Chapter VII). Complete knownness or, in cybernetic terms, total stability is
evidently uninteresting to the human cognitive disposition. Communication
therefore acts as the constant removal and restoration of stability through
disturbing and resuming the continuity of occurrences. Hence, the awareness
of preference knowledge cannot preclude creativity in textual communication;
instead, it merely enables participants to find an orientation for creativity
and to provide or recover its motivations within a given textual system.
16. The above line of argument suggests how a
systems-theoretical approach would resolve the dilemma of admitting human
processes as factors in the utilization or investigation of texts. The users of
a system must be aware of the system’s functional principles, or else
utilization will be impaired or blocked. Certain classes of occurrences, e.g.
ambiguities, contradictions, or discrepancies, which are likely to impede
utilization or to render it hard to control, are therefore considered
inopportune except for special effect (e.g.1n-jokes or paradoxes). The standards
of textuality we set forth in this book are all relational
in character, concerned with how occurrences are connected to others: via
grammatical dependencies on the surface (cohesion); via conceptual dependencies
in the textual world (coherence); via the attitudes of the participants toward
the text (intentionality and acceptability); via the incorporation of the new
and unexpected into the known and expected (informativity); via the setting
(situationality); and via the mutual relevance of separate texts (intertextuality).
17. This emphasis upon relational continuity and
connectivity allows us to study textuality and text processing in terms of
formal problem-solving in the sense
of Newell and Simon (1972).13 A problem
is defined as a pair of states whose connecting pathway is subject to failure
(not being traversed) because it can’t be found or identified. A serious
problem would obtain if the chances
of failure significantly outweigh those of success. The problem is said to be solved
when a pathway is found leading without interruption from the initial
state to the goal
state. If a point is reached where
the problem-solver cannot advance at all toward the goal, a block
has occurred. Clearly, the crucial operation of problem solving is the search
for connectivity between states. Three search types should be mentioned:14
(a) In depth-first search, the problem-solver tries to dash toward
the goal along one continuous pathway, giving little heed to alternatives as
long as progress moves forward. If a block is encountered, the problem-solver
moves back only far enough to get moving again and then resumes its dash
forward. Depth-first search is not very safe except when the pathway is obvious
and uncontested.
(b) In breadth-first search, the problem-solver looks ahead only up
to a proximate sub-goal and weighs the various pathways to get there. The best
path is attempted, and, if success ensues, the procedure is repeated with the
next sub-goal, until the main goal is eventually attained. Breadth-first search
is circumspect and safe, but may be inefficient and laborious if the pathway is
obvious.
(c) In means-end analysis, the problem-solver identifies the main
differences between the initial state and the goal state, and tries to reduce
them one by one. If the differences seem too great, an intermediate subgoal may
be taken for comparison first. While depth-first and breadth-first search can be
used in forward means-end analysis, efficiency can be increased by working both
forward from the initial state and backward from the goal state as seems
opportune. Indeed, any state along the way might be a useful control
centre to work out from in either direction.
18. We can
now sketch out a model of the production of texts, using the notions presented
in this chapter so far (compare Beaugrande 1979b; Flower & Hayes 1979; Meyer
1979). The model foresees a loosely sequential set of phases
of processing dominance. We say “dominance” because it seems unlikely
and unnecessary that the operations of one phase must shut down those of all the
others; rather, there could be a threshold beyond which the focus of
processing resources is directed to one phase of operations, while other
operations are only reduced rather than suspended. The notion of “dominance”
helps to resolve the opposition between modularity and interaction (III.4) by
allowing the processor to distribute its activities in various proportions (see
Winograd 1975)’. The interaction among levels (sound, syntax, meaning, etc.)
is managed by a class of operations called mapping:
the correlation of elements, structures, and relations of different types.16
It is not yet decidable how much organizational activity must be done within a
single level before mapping is carried out to other levels. There will often by asymmetry
(lack of one-to-one correspondence) between levels, but defaults
(assumptions made when no specifications are given) and preferences (dispositions toward one option over others) for
mapping would help to reduce current processing load (cf. VII.12).
19. Under typical conditions, operations are probably not
strongly tailored to the individual text materials. There ought to be powerful,
general procedures capable of accepting and adapting to a substantial diversity
of data and occasions (cf. X.5). Bobrow and Winograd’s (1977) notion of procedural
attachment (specification or modification of standard
operations for current needs) seems to fit here. The procedures would be called
by mechanisms of pattern-matching
that detect a reasonable fit between current and stored materials.17
While the general procedures are running, specific details can be filled in
where suitable.
20. The first phase of text production would usually be planning
(cf. Flower & Hayes 1979; Meyer 1979). The producer has the intention of
pursuing some goal via the text, e.g. distributing knowledge or obtaining
compliance with a plan (cf. I.13; VI.16ff.). In the most immediate sense, the
production of the text is a sub-goal along the pathway to the main goal. Through
means-end analysis (III.17(c)), the Producer could try to calculate which
of various possible texts would make the greatest contribution to reducing the
differences between the current state and the goal state. If this question is
hard to decide, one may try breadth-first search by offering several
texts in succession and hoping that one of them will lead to success. The texts
are integrated into the plan through plan
attachment (a subtype of procedural attachment as explained in III.19).
21. The setting of a goal and the choice of a text type
will be closely followed by (or will overlap with) a phase of ideation. An idea
would be an internally initiated (not environmentally forced) configuration of
content providing control centres
for productive, meaningful behaviour, including text production. The mapping of
a plan structure onto an idea (or vice versa) is doubtless intricate, especially
when it would not be expedient to talk about the plan too openly. For instance,
the goal of persuading people may demand elaborate searching for ideas that
would be appealing to the group’s presumed view of the world, or that would
change that view in a useful manner (cf. VI.16; VIII.17ff.) One would hardly
announce the plan itself (cf. VI.8; VIII.1)!
22. Following ideation, a phase of development
can serve to expand, specify, elaborate, and interconnect the ideas obtained.
Development can be envisioned as a searching of stored knowledge spaces,
i.e., internally organized configurations of content in the mind. Development
may vary between summoning forth more or less intact spaces and bringing
together very unusual constellations. The problem solving used to make content
coherent by connecting it via relational pathways (to be demonstrated in Chapter
V) would be correspondingly more intense in the latter case. Still, if the text
is to be informative in the sense of chapter VII, there would be at least some
new configurations in its textual world.18
23. The results of ideation and development need not yet
be committed to particular natural language expressions (cf. Flower & Hayes
1979: 24). They might, for instance, be composed of mental imagery19
for scenes or event sequences. Hence, there must be a phase of expression
to which the content accruing so far is relayed. Search for expressions would be
a special instance of problem-solving by constructing pathways from one level of
organization to another. However, search would be supported if, as seems
plausible, the activation of mental content naturally tends to spread out to the
typical expressions stored for that content (cf. V.12). Already active
expressions would then be taken as preferences
in the sense of III.18.
24. A special kind of problem
could arise here. Content such as mental imagery of a scene or of a sequence of
gradual events might be continuous,
while the expressions are more or less discrete
elements an important illustration of the asymmetry mentioned in III.18.
The text producer must decide upon the boundaries that scene components or
events should be assigned (cf. Halliday 1967-68; Miller & Johnson-Laird
1976; Talmy 1978). Different expressions will frequently suggest boundaries of
greater or lesser extent and distinctness.
25. Since the presentation of texts is limited to the
sequential media of sound or print, the final phase of production must be parsing:
putting the expressions relayed from the last phase into grammatical
dependencies and arranging the latter in a
linear format
for the surface text.
The repertory of grammatical dependencies in a language such as English is much
smaller than the repertory of conceptual relations we would consider necessary
(cf. IV.7ff versus V.26), so that asymmetry enters once again. There would be
less asymmetry in languages with many grammatical cases that signal conceptual
relations (e.g. Finnish, Hungarian).20
26. The most prominent preference in linearization is that of adjacency, i.e. the elements in a
grammatical dependency are arranged ‘next to each other in the progressive
series. Active storage (cf. IV.2; V.4) would be able to parse
dependencies with maximum ease when the elements are kept in closely knit
groups. However, many motivations readily override this preference. When a
single element enters into several dependencies in a phrase or sentence, some of
its dependent elements will have to be removed to some distance. In the opening
of the ‘rocket’-text from I.1, the sequence:
[4a] A great black and yellow V-2 rocket 46 feet long
contains one element ‘rocket’
entering into dependencies with a determiner (‘a’) and five modifiers
(‘great’, ‘black’, ‘yellow’, ‘V-2’, ‘long’). Since these
dependent elements cannot all be adjacent, conventions are applied for the
ordering of modifier types (cf. Vendler 1968; Martin 1969; Danks &
Glucksherg 1971), e.g. size before colour. In another sequence from the same
text:
[4b] With a great roar and burst of flame
knowledge of the world intervenes
to indicate that ‘great’ modifies both ‘roar’ and ‘burst’ (the
determiner ‘a’ not being repeated), but ‘of flame’ probably modifies
only ‘burst’. In contrast, the sequence of sample [6] running:
[6a] Great words or silences of
love
would preferentially be construed
as having ‘great’ and ‘of love’ depend on both ‘words’ and
‘silences’. If the modifiers represented opposed concepts, however, for
example:
[6b] Great words or silences of smallest size
we would link each modifier only
with the element adjacent to it. We can see that adjacency is a useful but
relatively weak preference in parsing.
27. We have
briefly surveyed the phases that might plausibly constitute text production:
planning, ideation, development, expression, and parsing. As was cautioned in
III.18, the phases should not be envisioned as running in a neat time sequence
with clear-cut boundaries. It would be perfectly conceivable that all five
phases could be interacting at once, with dominance shifting about rapidly. When
difficult or unsatisfactory results emerge in one phase, dominance could shift
back to a “deeper” phase (i.e. one further removed from the surface text
under production) for new modes of organisation. Later decisions may reveal that
previous ones were not advantageous; for instance, development and expression
may call forth changes in planning and ideation.22 Indeed, there may
be some such principle as the “intention of the text” whereby the textual
materials reveal organizational tendencies of their own during production and
impose them upon the producer, provided operations are not terminated too soon
(compare Iser (1980) on text intention in the reader’s viewpoint). In III.10,
we suggested that production is an inherently open-ended process whose
termination is carried out when a threshold of satisfaction is attained. Perhaps
that threshold could be evoked by the emergence of such material-specific
tendencies as depicted here. Yet even then, there might be potential left for
still more revising.
28. The
continued practice of text production could lead to a telescoping of phases. A
standard of text quality that once demanded much shifting among phases for
revision might become attainable in a single straightforward run-through.
Writers or speakers who are considered talented and important may not appear to
expend extreme effort on production, but they may offset shorter duration with
correspondingly greater intensity of processing. Even they presumably had to
work through early stages where vast expenditures were conscious and manifest.
The “intention of the text” —if there are grounds for such a
notion—might become easier to discern through extended experience. That effect
would explain why a practiced producer can improve upon other people’s texts
(not just on his or her own) without having actually participated in their
mental processes.22
29. The receiving
of texts could be modelled as a corresponding set of phases of processing
dominance in the reverse direction. 23 The receiver would begin on
the “surface” with the presentation itself and work “downward” to the
“deeper” phases.24 The surface text would be parsed
from the linear string into grammatical dependencies (an operation we Outline in
IV 7ff.). The elements in those dependencies are the expressions which activate
concepts and relations in mental storage—a phase we could call concept
recovery (cf. V.4). As the
conceptual configuration accrues and shows densities and dominances, the main ideas
can be extracted in a phase of idea
recovery. The extraction of the plans
which the text producer appears to be pursuing would be performed during plan
recovery. The receiver is now able
to consider possible actions and reactions.
30. Since we
explore the reception processes in detail in Chapters IV, V, and IX, we will not
pursue them here at any length. We should however point out that the phases of
reception, like those of production, need not be separated by rigid boundaries.
There is more probably a shifting of dominance with extensive interaction and
consultation among the phases, especially when the results in any phase are
considered doubtful or disturbing. There would also be variation in the
intensity and duration of the phases, depending on such factors as: (a) the
receiver’s judgement of the text’s quality (cf. III.10); (b) the degree to
which the text’s content should be integrated into the receiver’s store of
prior knowledge (cf. Spiro 1977; Beaugrande 1980c); (c) the receiver’s
cognitive and emotional involvement in the communicative situation. For
instance, the amount of inferencing done by the text receiver might vary
considerably (cf. I.11; V.34).
31.
Consequently, text reception too would involve a threshold
of termination where the comprehension and integration of the text is
deemed satisfactory (cf. III.10). If the text is important for the receiver, the
threshold will be high. A professional literary critic, for example, would
expend atypically great amounts of processing on specific literary samples,
encompassing not only the most probable and easily recoverable aspects of format
and content, but many more subtle subsidiary aspects as well. A still more
extreme illustration would be the analysis performed by a professional linguist
uncovering not only the actually intended structural organization, but many
possible alternatives that normal text receivers would not be likely to notice.
32. In some
respects, the reception of a text would not be a reversal of the procedures of
production (cf. III.29). The receiver must try to anticipate the producer’s
activities in order to react rapidly and intelligently. Here, receiving has the
same directionality as producing, i.e. the receiver is trying to emulate the
production process,25 thus rendering more immediate the recovery of
main ideas and plans (III.29). Without the continual creating and testing of hypotheses
about what the producer is doing, the receiver could easily bog down in an
undirected mass of alternatives and non-determinacies. There would be an explosion
of structures and relations that processing could hardly handle in any realistic
expanse of time.26
33. This very
rough outline of production and reception will be filled in somewhat in later
chapters. It is a difficult object of investigation because many operations are
hard to observe and control in a reliable experimental setting. We must set up procedural
models which reflect the operations that might be responsible for the
means whereby texts are created and used. These models can be tested in two
ways. First, their functioning can be simulated on computers, as is done
in the field of research known as artificial
intelligence (cf. surveys in Minsky & Papert 1974; Goldstein &
Papert 1977; Winston 1977; Winston & Brown (eds.) 1979; X.26ff.).27
Terry Wino-grad (1972) demonstrated how a computer could be programmed to use a
Halliday-style grammar to process English utterances about moving blocks on a
table. Roger Schank’s theory of “conceptual dependency” views language
understanding as the application of knowledge about sequences of events and
actions (cf. Schank et al. 1975; Schank & Abelson 1977). To the extent that
they involve processing tasks, some issues of traditional text linguistics have
been restated computationally, e.g. use of pronouns (cf. Grosz 1977; Webber
1978a: Hobbs 1979). Although the human mind may not handle language processes in
exactly the same way as the computers, these machines are indispensable for
testing whether complex procedural models can operate (cf. X.27).
34. Another
line of inquiry is developing in cognitive
psychology, the branch of psychology concerned with acquisition, storage,
and use of knowledge (survey in Kintsch 1977a).28 Here, models are
tested against the cognitive and linguistic behaviour of human subjects on such
tasks as recognizing and recalling what has been heard or read. Although most
work was devoted to sentences (survey in Clark & Clark 1977), texts have
become increasingly prominent objects of investigation. We shall review some
trends in that domain in IX.24ff
35. It would be
wrong to imply that the production and reception of texts are well explored at
this time. On the contrary, we are only gradually achieving a consensus about
what the issues are. The true complexity of the operations involved
doubtless exceeds by several orders of magnitude the most complex models
developed so far (cf. X.28). For the present, we would like to imagine that
complexity will still prove manageable (cf. X.29), due to principles like
procedural attachment (III.19) and general problem-solving (III.17). Thus,
although there would be a vast number of operations in text processing, there
would be a reasonably small number of operation types, e.g. maintaining
continuity and connectivity, testing hypotheses, matching patterns, computing
probabilities, planning toward goals, solving problems, and so forth (cf.
X.4f.). In the following discussion of the standards of textuality, we shall
repeatedly return to these operation types as illustrated via naturally
occurring texts of many kinds.
Notes
1 See
for example Saussure (1916); Firth (1957); Hartmann (1963a, 1963b); Coseriu
(1967); Halliday (1976); Berry (1977).
2 Cited
in Stegmililer (1969:205).
3 The
importance of this factor emerged in early computer models of language
processing, e.g. Petrick (1965); cf. Woods (1970).
4
Compare the notion of “procedural adequacy” in Schank & Wilensky (1977).
5
Compare 0.6; X.6.
6 cf.
Craik & Lockhart (1972); Mistler-Lachman (1974). We make no attempt to state
just how many “depths” there are in all, but these seem fairly safe: (1)
substance of sound/print; (2) linear surface presentation; (3) grammatical
dependency structure; (4) conceptual-relational text-world; (5) main idea; (6)
plan. These “depths” moving from shallowest (1) to deepest (6) in the first
will (except for (1), cf. note 2 to Chapter 1) be discussed later on in the
chapter.
7 As
Peter Hartmann (personal communication to RdB) observes, professional linguists
have a disproportionately high threshold of processing and uncover far more
structures than normal language users. Unfortunately, the linguist’s analysis
has all too often been taken as a model of language comprehension, most
drastically by transformationalists (cf. overview in Clark & Clark 1977).
8 See
especially the papers in Warning (ed.) (1975).
9 cf.
Hartmann (1963a: 85f.); Oomen (1969); Fowler (1977: 69).
10
Actualisation was already treated by Coseriu (1955-6).
11 The
vital importance of continuity has all too frequently been overlooked in
linguists’ preoccupation with analysis into units and constituents. All the
standards of textuality are closely related to continuity (cf. for instance
III.16; IV.1; V.2; VII.13; IX.29).
12, Our
use of the term is rather broader than that of its originator, Yorick Wilks (see
now Wilks 1979).
13 The
“general problem-solver” was an early programme (Ernst & Newell 1969) in
which powerful operations were decoupled from the specifics of tasks at hand.
Our treatment is closer to that of Winston (1977) because of our network
representations. See following note.
14 See
Winston (1977: 90ff.; 130ff )
15
The notion of “control centre” is crucial in understanding procedures
of access (cf. for instance IV.7; V.24, 29f.; Beaugrande 1980a).
16
“Mapping” was originally a concept of formal logic, but it can also be
operationalised (cf. Goldman, Balzer & Wile 1977).
17 On
pattern-matching, cf. K. Colby & Parkinson (1974); Kuipers (1975); Pavylidis
(1977); Rumelhart (1977a); Winston (1977).
18 To
what degree a textual world (cf. 1.6; V.2) ought to match or differ from prior
stored knowledge, and how this matching is done, are among the most burning
questions for a science of texts. Sec IX.31ff.
19
Mental imagery is an inordinately difficult issue (cf. Paivio 1971), but it
can’t be ignored (cf. VI.26; VII.10; IX.32).
20
Asymmetry would mean, in operational terms, problem-solving on interactive
levels with units and paths of different size, range, and constitution. Still,
the levels are mutually supportive at least some of the time (cf. V. 30).
21 On
this use of the notion “deeper”, see note 6 to this chapter and note 19 to
Chapter 11.
22 The
writer Peter von Tramin (personal communication to WD) maintains that, before he
ever begins to write, he has already decided upon the content of the text, the
course of events, the arrangement of the various segments, the assignment of
materials to the foreground or the background, the use of retardation or
expansion, the elements of dialogue, and the characters of the story line. Such
an example is doubtless unusual: decisions like these would more often be made
along the way during the writing. A more disturbing phenomenon is how other
writers can weigh one’s own decisions and suggest changes, even though they
did not partake in the original planning at all (cf. III.28 and note 22a to this
chapter).
22a
Indeed, revision often seems easier for non-producers of the text because the
producer already knows the intended ideas and fails to see cases of inefficient
expression or downright error.
23 A
reversible formalism which both parses the ‘rocket’-text onto a network and
vice-versa is given in Simmons & Chester (1979); Beaugrande (1981b).
24 On
“depth”, see note 6 to this chapter.
25 A
procedure called “analysis-by-synthesis” (cf. Neisser 1967).
26 On
“explosion”, cf. note 3 to this chapter.
27
“Intelligence” is taken to designate a human-like capacity to deal with a
wide range of diverse tasks and input (as opposed to the computer-like slavish
dependence on strict steps and rigid formats) (cf. Lenat 1977; Walker (ed.)
1978; Simon 1979). Compare X. 5; X.26.
28 The
cooperation of cognitive psychologists with computer scientists in artificial
intelligence has fostered the discipline of “cognitive science” (cf. I.24;
X.3).
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