CORPUS LINGUISTICS - 2008
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Postpositive Subclausal Units in Spoken Language (Based on the "Dream Stories" Corpora)
This work is based on the "Dream stories" corpora. The corpora consists of oral stories, told by children and teenagers in Russian language about their dreams. It is represented as a transcript of about two hours long speech and is representative for this discourse type. The speech in the transcript is divided into elementary discursive units (EDU). Principal prosodic characteristics are marked for each unit its. The volume of the corpora is 3734 EDU. It is well known that oral discourse mainly consists of clausal structures. The same is in our corpora. In the present research we discuss EDUs that convey propositional information but at the same time are not clausal. So we speak about the minority of speech entities that constitute 10,4% of all corpora's EDU. We analysed postpositive subclausal units according to their a) semantic-syntactical structure relatively to the main clause (echo vs parceling / increment); b) cognitive characteristics of if the speaker have planned or not this unit (parceling vs increment).The most frequent type is echo. More than 40% of echo-EDU appear when the speaker add to the main clause some information which he considers to be important to explain what has happened or to make more complete the description. The other functional echo types are also discussed in the present work.
The main parceling / increment's function is to divide one clause into two EDU. Such a division in case of increment is not planned by the speaker, but it is used by him when after producing a clause he reveals not to mention a relevant for this clause detail and can add this detail posteriori attaching it to the main clause. In case of parceling the division is planned and is caused by the ability to activate only one idea per focus of consciousness (after Chafe W.), that is per one EDU.
In the present work quantitative data per corpora are presented, we cite semantic and cognitive reasons of postpositive subclausal units formation.
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