Chapter 4. Communicative syntactic analysis

Abstract

The goal of communicative analysis is to transform the Subject-Predicate-Objects-Adverbials structure of individual sentences into a metalinguistic information structure. In the latter, two basic data types are identified, objects and attributes. Attributes are linked to a single object or establish connections between a number of objects (in which case they can be also called predicates). An attribute together with its object(s) forms a proposition. In the information structure, objects can be related to one another either directly or via attributes. Attributes are also interrelated by temporal, causal, and other links. There is no direct correspondence between the constituents of the Subject-Predicate-Objects-Adverbials structure and the information structure components, e.g. the subject of a sentence does not necessarily become an object in the information structure, etc. The analysis of successive sentences requires to keep track of objects and attributes, which brings in the problem of reference. Information on space and time should also be accounted for and represented in the overall structure. As no restrictions are imposed on the type of the analyzed texts, the chapter summarizes the distinctive features of various text types. However, they prove to be insufficient for the type identification. The situation is further complicated by their intricate combinations (narration can alternate with description, persuasion can enter into narration, etc.). This chapter is a pilot study of quite a number of issues central for natural language processing but as yet lacking attention and satisfactory solution.