A relação retórica de elaboração : subtipos e caracterização semântica

Abstract

The aim of this work is to contribute to the refinement of the rhetorical relation of Elaboration, which, despite being present in most Discourse theories (Mann e Thompson, 1988, Asher e Lascarides, 2003), it has been the subject of some debate due to the ambiguity of the definitions that are proposed (cf. Fabricius-Hansen e Behrens, 2001). To handle this problem, namely the lack of clarity in the distinction between Elaboration and Background, Prevót, Vieu e Asher (2009) propose the rhetorical relation Entity-Elaboration (Ent-Elaboration), distinct from the 'classical' Elaboration relation, now named Eventuality-Elaboration (Ev-Elaboration). The Ent-Elaboration is inferred when the β segment represents a proposition in which the main eventuality is a state eβ descriptive of x, where x is an accessible discourse referent (Descriptive State (eβ, x)) (cf. Prevót, Vieu and Asher, 2009:215). Although the distinction between these two types of Elaboration can contribute to explain more accurately meaning relations of this kind, their definitions do not account for all data, particularly data in literary and journalistic texts. The analysis of the data reveals that we can distinguish two subtypes of Ev-Elaboration and two subtypes of Ent-Elaboration. In this work, in addition to a brief critical review of existing proposals on Elaboration, we analyse data collected from three short stories and news from some newspapers. In this analysis, our objectives are, on the one hand, to show that, for the data to be fully explained, we need a clearer definition of Elaboration's inference conditions, which is only possible if we identify the linguistic elements/ mechanisms that configure the segments; on the other hand, we check if the inference conditions of the Elaboration subtypes are the same in both types of text. Finally, we will make a proposal on Elaboration subtypes and their respective rules of inference.