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Book: An Introduction to Relational Network Theory

Chapter: 7. An RNT Approach to Participants in English Texts

DOI: 10.1558/equinox.26604

Blurb:

This chapter offers a relational network perspective on pronoun distribution in narration. Although countless nouns can be referred to by only a few (third-person) pronouns, the latter rarely produce ambiguity in discourse, even when the actions of varied participants are described. In narrative, a participant is usually named at first appearance, while pronouns are used for subsequent appearances. Reoccurrence of a name may respond to text length, discourse considerations (e.g., providing new information, establishing a thematic participant), and semantic constraints (e.g., avoiding ambiguity). Following Gleason’s stratificational approach to pronoun occurrence in a folktale in Kâte (a Papuan language), we present a network-based description of noun, pronoun, or zero realization for participant reference in a comparable English text. The chapter shows that discourse-level phenomena in typologically different languages can be characterized using similar resources from Relational Network Theory.

Chapter Contributors

  • Adolfo García ([email protected] - adolfogarcia) 'Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata'