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Article published In: Linguistics in the Netherlands 2021
Edited by Mark Dingemanse, Eva van Lier and Jorrig Vogels
[Linguistics in the Netherlands 38] 2021
► pp. 21–39

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The discourse structure of free indirect discourse reports

 | University of Groningen
 | University of Groningen
 | University of Groningen
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 29 October 2021
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https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.00048.bim
Abstract
We investigate the discourse structure of Free Indirect Discourse passages in narratives. We argue that Free Indirect Discourse reports consist of two separate propositional discourse units: an (explicit or implicit) frame segment and a reported content. These segments are connected at the level of discourse structure by a non-veridical, subordinating discourse relation of Attribution, familiar from recent SDRT analyses of indirect discourse constructions in natural conversation (Hunter, Julie. 2016. “Reports in Discourse.” Dialogue & Discourse 7 (4): 1–35. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). We conducted an experiment to detect the covert presence of a subordinating frame segment based on its effects on pronoun resolution. We compared (unframed) Free Indirect Discourse with overtly framed Indirect Discourse and a non-reportative segment. We found that the first two indeed pattern alike in terms of pronoun resolution, which we take as evidence against the pragmatic context split approach of Schlenker, Philippe. 2004. “Context of Thought and Context of Utterance: A Note on Free Indirect Discourse and the Historical Present.” Mind & Language 19 (3): 279–304. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar and Eckardt, Regine. 2014. The Semantics of Free Indirect Discourse: How Texts Allow Us to Mind-Read and Eavesdrop. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, and in favor of our discourse structural Attribution analysis.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The pragmatic context split approach to Free Indirect Discourse
  • 3.The discourse structure of reporting constructions
    • 3.1Basic SDRT and discourse relations
    • 3.2The discourse structure of speech and attitude reports
  • 4.The discourse structure of FID reports
  • 5.The experiment: Discourse relations in FID and ID
    • 5.1Methods
      • 5.1.1Participants
      • 5.1.2Materials and design
      • 5.1.3Predictions
      • 5.1.4Results
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (31)
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Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Abrusán, Márta
2023. Plural and Quantified Protagonists in Free Indirect Discourse and Protagonist Projection. Journal of Semantics 40:1 ► pp. 127 ff. DOI logo

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