Real Grammar in Fictional Contexts- catherin emmot

8/13/2019 Real Grammar in Fictional Contexts- catherin emmot

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Real Grammar in Fictional Contexts

Catherine Emmott

Grammarians have traditionally confined their studies to isolated sample sentences or phrases and have

typically drawn on their intuitions about how they believe language works rather than on observations

of how language actually does work. Using this method, a grammatical system may be developed

without the analyst ever considering how linguistic features occur in real1

naturally-occurring acts ofcommunication such as novels, textbooks, newspapers and everyday conversation. There is, however, a

strong assumption amongst certain linguists (e.g. Chafe, 1980, 1994; Thompson, 1987; Sinclair (ed.),1987, 1990; Werth, forthcoming; Emmott, forthcoming) that the study of real acts of communication

should provide the raw material for creating grammatical theories, rather than being viewed as an after

the event application. The real grammar which emerges from studying this type of data may be

significantly different from findings based on artificially-constructed data in terms of both specific

details and the overall theoretical approach.

This study examines one particular genre, narrative fiction, looking at how language actually operatesin these texts. The main object of this work is not to provide an analysis of the stylistic properties of

specific texts or to comment on the language of the genre (although such observations will arise from

the analysis), but to look at some of the canonical assumptions of grammatical theory, seeing how

applicable these assumptions are in the face of real data and exploring topics on which the standard

grammar textbooks remain silent. In particular, the study suggests that the interpretation of particulargrammatical relationships in narrative texts can only be explained by such cognitive factors as theinvolvement, perspective and orientation of the reader. This raises questions about the nature of

grammatical theory and about what should be included in grammar textbooks.

FROM UNREAL TO REAL DATA

Utilising unreal data has a long tradition in Linguistics and also in Social Science subjects such as

Psychology. Most grammar textbooks illustrate their observations about language using examples that

have been made up by the grammarians themselves and which they assume will be recognised as

representative of how language works in general. Often this has been due either to convenience or to an

undue reliance on intuition. Sometimes, however, there are more deliberate reasons, both theoretical

and practical, for the choice of data. Generative linguists, for example, have shunned real texts in the

belief that they are replete with performance errors, such as slips of the tongue in spoken

communication, and so do not adequately reflect the underlying knowledge of a language possessed bya speaker. This point of view is made explicit by Chomsky (1965, p. 4) when he comments that:

Observed use of language or hypothesized dispositions to respond, habits, and so on, may provide

evidence as to the nature of this mental reality, but surely cannot constitute the actual subject matter of

linguistics, if this is to be a serious discipline. For different reasons, many psychologists will also opt

to use self-created language materials in their experiments on language comprehension. This type ofdata is considered by experimenters to be more easy to control empirically than sentences extracted

from real acts of communication.

In contrast to this approach, discourse analysts argue that artificially-constructed data lacks important

properties of real language. This is partly due to the brevity of artificial data, which is often only one or

two sentences in length. Certain grammatical features have been shown only to be understood properly

when they are studied alongside related linguistic items spanning much larger stretches of text, as

shown by Halliday and Hasans seminal (1976) work on textual cohesion. Brief made-up examples are

also likely to lack overall discourse structure, such as topic shifts in non-narrative and flashbacks orchanges in point of view in narrative. Much research in discourse analysis has demonstrated that major

discourse boundaries can have an effect on grammatical form (e.g. Chafe, 1980; Clancy, 1980, 1992;

Fox, 1987a,b, 1988; Emmott, 1989).Even if a single sentence of real text is compared with a single sentence of made-up text, the

differences can be considerable. Chafe (1994, p. 108) has found that the patterns of given and new

information in constructed examples are often quite unlike those found in a corpus of real texts.

Traditional grammar textbooks may also give undue emphasis to simple structures which are

comparatively rare in reality (Chafe 1994, p. 17), as Sinclair (1990, p. xi) points out in relation to two-

word sentences comprising just a subject and verb. Conversely, structures which have a reasonablefrequency in real text might never be mentioned in a grammar textbook based on constructed examples

alone.

As an increasing amount has been learnt about the properties of real discourse, approaches to writing

grammar textbooks have been changing, with some of these textbooks now citing extracts from realtexts (e.g. Freeborn, 1987; Downing & Locke, 1992). The purpose of such extracts does, nevertheless,
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often seem to be to illustrate a pre-existing model derived from artificial data or to fill in minor gaps in

such a model. This is very different from utilising real data to build a model of grammar from first

principles.

More revolutionary in this respect are recent attempts to analyse linguistic usage utilising large text

corpora which are analysed with the assistance of computer concordances (e.g. Sinclair, 1987, 1990).

Such projects are changing many of our assumptions about the language. This type of analysis is not,

however, the only way of analysing grammatical items in real data and can be complemented by otherapproaches. The following section discusses how grammatical items can be studied by tracing their

usage through specific passages and observing how linguistic forms are influenced by the developmentof the texts in which they occur.

REAL DATA, REAL GRAMMAR

The approach taken to grammar in this article can be described as cognitive-functional and text-

orientated, in the tradition of American discourse analysts such as Chafe (1980, 1994), Du Bois (1980),

Clancy (1980, 1992), Hopper (1979), Hopper and Thompson (1980), Thompson (1987) and Longacre(1983). This approach involves identifying cognitive reasons for the use of a particular grammatical

form at a specific point in a text. This section illustrates this type of analysis by examining instances of

three grammatical features (the past perfect, the indefinite article and anaphoric/cataphoric pronouns)

in selected examples of narrative text. I argue that the textual examples cited can only be accounted for

by postulating cognitive factors such as the following:(i) Knowledge:for example, information which is available to enable the reader to identify the referentof a referring expression or to make inferences about the possible identity of the referent (e.g. Emmott,

1994; Werth, 1995, forthcoming).

(ii) Orientation and re-orientation:for example, the readers need to track the continuity of eventsin

a spatio-temporal unit or to recognise switches from one spatio-temporal unit to another (e.g. Chafe,

1980; Clancy, 1980; Emmott, 1989, 1995b, forthcoming; Werth, 1995, forthcoming).

(iii) Involvement:for example, the perception of a scene as being more or less vivid by virtue of its

narrative presentation (e.g. Longacre, 1970, 1983).

(iv) Perspective:for example, the identification with the point of view of one character rather than

another (e.g. Fowler, 1977, 1986; Fludernik, 1993; Duchan et al(eds.), 1995; Werth, 1995,

forthcoming).

(v) Salience:the degree of importance of knowledge (see (i) above), due to factors such as the status of

a character or the centrality of events in terms of plot expectations (Clancy, 1980, 1992; Grimes, 1975;Grimes (ed.), 1978).

(vi) Distance:the amount of text/discourse that has elapsed since relevant knowledge (see (i) above)

was acquired from the text (e.g. Clancy, 1980; Emmott, 1995a).

These categories will be explained further in the remainder of the section, as the text examples are

analysed. The list above is not intended as a comprehensive one since a full analysis of a text wouldrequire a much finer-grained system (Emmott, in preparation). It will, nevertheless, serve to illustrate

the general point that cognitive factors are important in grammatical analysis and, furthermore, to

demonstrate how a number of cognitive factors may weigh against each other in the

production/interpretation of a particular grammatical form. In each case, this explanation is compared

and contrasted with that of standard grammar textbooks and the differences identified are then

discussed in the following section.

(I) VERBAL ASPECT: THE PAST PERFECTOne generalization that is often made in grammar textbooks is that the past perfect (e.g. had spoken) is

used to signal remote or past in the past time, which is anterior (Quirk et al (1985, pp 195-196)

to that denoted by the simple past tense (e.g. spoke). In describing the language of narrative texts, itwould seem natural, therefore, to assume that when the main narrative is in the simple past tense,

flashbacks will be in the past perfect. In fact, an examination of real narratives shows that substantial

portions of flashbacks may utilise the same verb form as the main narrative. Indeed, the past perfect is

often found only at the beginning of a flashback and sometimes intermittently throughout2.During

much of a flashback the simple past may be used, as shown below:

Example 1This account [of her childhood] Vivien had given in a not at all self-pitying way but speculating as to

how many siblings she might actually by then have. Zosiehad been there and had listened with a kind

of staring intensity, her elbows on the table and her little pale face held in the cup of her hands.

My mothers abandoned me too,she said.That was before she had told Vivien about the baby. She was still the mystery girl, come out of


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nowhere.

My mother doesnt know where I am,she said. She doesnt care, does she? She hasnt tried to find

me, she hasnt looked for me, she hasnt told the police. Im missing but she doesnt care.

How do you know?Rufus said. It was you ran away from her not she from you. Or so one gathers.

How do you know shes not going spare?

Weve had the radio on every day and theres been nothing. I bought a paper while we were in

London. Ive looked at papers every time weve been in Sudbury and theres never been a word . Shedoesnt care, shes glad Ive gone.

So what?said reasonable Rufus. Isnt that what you want? I thought you said that the last thing youwanted was to go home. You dont want your mother fussing around you, do you?

Shiva thought he had understood. Vivien certainly had. Vivien said it was one thing a young girl

running away from home and being glad to leave her parents but quite another for her to find out the

parents were relieved shed gone. And Zosiesaid:

Dont you see how terrible it is? Im missing from home and my mother isnt worried. I might have

been murdered. For Christs sake, Im only seventeen.She began to cry, tearing sobs. Vivien sat down beside her and put an arm round her, then

she turned her round and held her in her arms. It was later that day that Zosie had told Vivien

everythingor almost everything. At any rate she had told her about the baby.

(Barbara Vine, 1987,A Fatal Inversion, pp. 194-195)

In this extract, all the events take place several years prior to those of the main narrative, recallingevents which happened to the characters in their youths. The extract begins in the past perfect (had

given, had been, had listened), but switches to simple past whilst still describing the same time period

(said, began, sat down, etc.). Towards the end of the extract, the verb form switches to the past perfectagain (Zosie had told Vivien everything), signalling a time which is still anterior to the main narrative,

but which is nevertheless subsequent to that of the immediately preceding passage. Clearly, there is no

pervasive correlation between anterior events and the past perfect verb form. Quirk et al(1985, p. 196),

which is one of the most detailed grammar textbooks, does, in part, prepare us for this:

But of course, the past perfective does not have to refer to a more remote time than that referred to by

the simple past. In some cases, particularly in a clause introduced by after, the two constructions can bemore or less interchangeable:

[i] I ate [T2] my lunch after Sandra had come[T3] back from her shopping.

[ii] I ate[T2] my lunch after Sandra came[T3] back from her shopping.

Afterplaces the eating (T2) after Sandras return (which we may call T3), so the past perfective, which

places T3 before T2, is redundant. What difference it does make is a matter of the standpoint of the

speaker. In [sentence (i)] the past in past time T3 is identified as being earlier than T2 by the pastperfective; but in [sentence (ii)] it is left to the conjunction afterto signal this temporal relation.

This explanation alerts us to the possibility of variability but does not adequately account for why in

one of Quirk et als examples the conjunction is followed by the past perfect (or past perfective as it is

termed in Quirk et al) whereas in the other it is omitted as redundant. To ascertain this type of

information, it would be necessary to look at the communicative context of real examples of this

structure to see what motivates the use of a particular verb form.

Variability of the verb form in the narrative extract in Example 1 might be partially explained by

redundancy after the initial set-up of the scene. The initial events would therefore be in the past perfect

to establish the anteriority of the ensuing sequence of events, but once established all events in the

sequence might be assumed to belong to the same time period without the need for a linguistic

indicator. In addition, the simple past might be regarded as a more immediate form, more appropriateto a scene incorporating a fair amount of direct speech and from a practical point of view the simple

past may also be easier to sustain over long stretches of text since it has a less cumbersome structure

than the past perfect3.The switch to the past perfect at the end of the extract might be seen as a

reaffirmation of the anteriority of the flashback time frame after a minor shift to the parameters (later

that day), even though, at this particular point, time is moving forwards rather than backwards. The use

of past perfect verb forms at this point also coincides with summarising of the conversation rather thanthe more mimetic direct speech that has come earlier.

If this analysis is correct, the past perfect can be seen as a characteristic of reorientationrather than as

a time marker of orientation. The readers assumption of the continuity of events within the past in the

past time band would make unnecessary repeated grammatical signalling and a lack of repeated

signalling would allow greater involvement in the action, making the events come to life for the

reader. However, in cases where a flashback may intermittently signalorientation

, there may be a

tension between reminding the reader of the time frame of the activity and increasing involvementby

making the presentation more vivid.


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( I I) DEFI NITENESS

Examining real texts shows the articles to have a more complex range of functions than suggested by

the standard grammar books. Consider, for example, standard statements about the indefinite article, as

found in Quirk et al (1985, p. 272):

...a/an Xwill be used where the reference ofXis not uniquely identifiable in the shared knowledge of

speaker and hearer. Hence a/an is typically used when the referent has not been mentioned before, andis assumed to be unfamiliar to the speaker or hearer:

An intruderhas stolen a vase. The intruderstole the vasefrom a locked case. The casewas smashedopen.

Although common, this is not the only pattern to be found in narrative. An entity may also be denoted

with an indefinite article when it has been previously mentioned in the text and can therefore be

assumed to be familiar to both writer and reader. Consider the following situation in Mervyn

PeakesTitus Groan. Steerpike has been climbing across the roof of Gormenghast for several hours

trying to find a way of entering the castle. He eventually manages to force his way through a windowand, in exhaustion, lands unconscious on the floor of Fuchsias secret attic. Some time later, Fuchsia

enters the attic:

Example 2

Her long coloured candles were by the door and she lit one of them immediately from the little white

one in her hand. Turning to place it on the table, her heart stopped beating, for she found that she wasstaring across the room at a body lying huddled beneath her window.

(Mervyn Peake, 1985, Titus Groan, pp. 147-148)

The indefinite article a is used in the noun phrase a body even though the reader must know both thatthere is a body in the attic and that the character is Steerpike. This knowledge comes partly from the

previous account of Steerpikes entry into the room and partly from the chapter heading (incorporating

a definite article), The body by the window. Clearly, the reason for the indefinite article is that

Steerpike is at this point unknown to one of the other characters, Fuchsia, through whose eyes the

reader is witnessing the action. This use of the indefinite article often accompanies a switch

inperspective, either from one character to another or as the physical distance increases between theperceiver and the perceived.

Example 3

...He [Matty] thrust his books into their hands and limped quickly away. They held on to each other,

laughing like apes. They broke apart, clamorously collected their fellows. The whole troupe clattered

up the stone stairs, up, up, one, two, three storeys to the landing by the great window. They pushed and

shoved against the great bar that ran from one end to the other at boy-height, and held the verticals thatwere less than a boys width apart. Fifty yards away and fifty feet downa boy limped quickly towards

the forbidden tree.

(William Golding, 1980,Darkness Visible, p. 24)

In this example, Matty is represented by the indefinite expression a boy at the point at which he moves

into the distance and this device also serves to highlight his alienation from the other boys. This

linguistic signalling ofperspective, by means of the indefinite article, therefore overcomes the usual

requirement for a definite article when the reader has knowledgeof the characters identity (particularly

when the individual has been so recently mentioned, so the linguistic distanceis small).Of course, narratologists and text linguists are increasingly studying the relationship between language

and point of view (e.g. Fludernik, 1993; Duchan et al(eds.), 1995; Werth, 1995, forthcoming), so theseobservations about perspective are not new. However, there does need to be some transfer of these

ideas from the domain of literary linguistics to the grammatical canon. This use of the indefinite article

is not just found in literary texts. Du Bois (1980, pp. 258-272) finds similar features in oral narratives

he examines and comments that The literature on definiteness....has isolated definiteness from larger

considerations of discourse structure as a whole.....many crucial phenomena related to definiteness are

either not found or not easily recognized within the domain of one-sentence or two-sentence examples

which are typically used.

(II I) ANAPHORIC AND CATAPHORIC REFERENCE

The distinction between anaphora and cataphora is rarely examined critically in the grammar

textbooks. Quirk et al(1985, p. 347) offer the following explanations:

... we distinguish between Anaphoric and Cataphoric uses of a 3rd person pronoun, according to

whether the element with which it co-refers (the Antecedent) precedes or follows it.


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and also (p. 351):

Cataphoric reference occurs less frequently [than anaphoric reference], and under limited conditions.

Where it does occur, anaphoric reference is also possible, so that we can equate two synonymous

sentences such as [i] and [ia] in which the positions of pronoun and antecedent are reversed.

[i - cataphoric] Before hejoined the Navy, Geraldmade peace with his family.[ia - anaphoric] Before Geraldjoined the Navy, hemade peace with his family.

This explanation takes no account of the fact that a sentence may be preceded by prior text. Thefollowing example would be cataphoric by Quirk et als criterion, but is, arguably, anaphoric in its

natural context:

Example 4

In addition to his five famous novels and collection of short stories available as Penguins, E.M.

Forster has published about fourteen other works...

(Opening biography in E.M. Forster , 1954, Collected Short Stories)

The pronoun his precedes the name E.M. Forster in this particular sentence, as he precedes Gerald in

Quirk et als example. The biography has, however, begun with the statement thatEdward Morgan

Forster was born in London in 1879 and the intervening text contains a succession of anaphoricpronouns. The pronoun hiscan be interpreted automatically if we have already read the preceding text

and can therefore be analysed as anaphoric to the antecedent noun phrase Edward Morgan Forster inthe first sentence rather than cataphoric to the succeeding E.M. Forster in the sentence cited in Example

4.

This may seem as if the notion of anaphora simply needs to be expanded to take account of antecedentsin previous sentences of the text. This is the approach suggested by cohesion analysts (e.g. Halliday

and Hasan, 1976) who see texts as being comprised of inter-sentential ties or chains of linguistic items.

The problem with this approach is that there are cases where there is no recent antecedent, but where

there are still clues to the identity of the referent, as in the following extract:

Example 5

Im going to work on that kid every hour of the day until I get something.She rose formidably andmoved across the restaurant, like a warship going into action, a warship on the right side in a war to

end wars, the signal flags proclaiming that every man would do his duty. Her big breasts, which had

never suckled a child of her own, felt a merciless compassion. Rose fled at the sight of her,

but Ida moved relentlessly towards the service door.

(Graham Greene, 1943,Brighton Rock, pp. 120-121)

This example begins in medias resat the start of a new chapter. The previous episode (pp. 116-120)

does not mention the referent, Ida, at all. In terms of the proximity of an antecedent, the pronouns in

this extract would have to be considered cataphoric, with the antecedent being the name Ida in the final

line. It is, nevertheless, relatively easy to guess, before encountering the name, that these pronounsrefer to Ida. The mention of going to work on that kid every hour of the day and the warship

metaphor link in with the fact that she is pursuing Pinkie, a character who is referred to throughout the

story as the Boy or described as a kid. This is so central to the plot of the story that the reader must

be aware of this information. The physical description also corresponds to previous descriptions of Ida.

Although the final mention of the name may confirm the identity of the referent, there seems a fairpossibility that the reader will have already ascertained it. Making assumptions of this kind is part of

reading, but is not taken account of in grammatical theory. If the above example is classified accordingto Quirk et als criterion (or by that of Halliday and Hasan), it cannot be anaphoric. If, however,

anaphora is taken to mean that information is available to decode a pronoun (whether or not in the form

of an explicit antecedent), then the pronouns could be classified as anaphoric, depending on the

interpretive strategy of the reader. As far as cognitive functions are concerned, the

readersknowledgeof the character, reinforced by thesalienceof the individual due to her plot

centrality, means that thedistanceof the last mention can be overcome.

Sometimes, the ability to identify a character in such circumstances may be due not just to general plot

salience but to the reinstatement of a specific contextual frame (Emmott, 1989, 1994), as in the

following extract:

Example 6

But hewasFred. He told me he was Fred.

He was Charles. You can read it there. Charles Hale.

That dont signify, Ida said. A man always has a different name for strangers. You arent telling meyour real names Clarence. And a man dont have a different name for every girl. Hed get confused.


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You know you always stick to Clarence. You cant tell me much about men I dont know.

It dont mean anything. You can read how it was. They just happened to mention it. Nobody took any

notice of that.

She said sadly, Nobodys taken any notice of anything. You can read it here.He hadnt got any folks

to make a fuss. The coroner asked if any relation of the deceased was present, and the police witness

stated that they could trace no relations other than a second cousin in Middlesborough. It sounds sort

of lonely, Nobody there to ask questions.I know what loneliness is, Ida,the sombre man said. Ive been alone a month now.

She took no notice of him: she was back at Brighton on Whit Monday, thinking how while she waitedthere, he must have been dying, walking along the front to Hove, dying, and the cheap drama and

pathos of the thought weakened her heart towards him.

(Graham Greene, 1943,Brighton Rock, pp. 31-32)

In the final paragraph, the first male pronoun (him) refers to the sombre man, but the second one (he)

refers to the dead man who is called both Charles Hale and Fred. Since there is no antecedent between

these two pronouns, there needs to be some explanation of how the second pronoun can be interpreted.

It could be argued that there is a direct anaphoric connection between the last mention of the character

(hadnt got any folks) and this one (he must have been dying), made possible by the lexical cohesion

between the words deceased and dying. Arguably, however, the shift of contextual frame (to the pastWhit Monday in Brighton), recalling a prior salient scene involving Ida waiting for the deceased man,

reinstates these characters in our minds before we even reach the pronoun under analysis. If this is thecase, the frame switch is taking over the role that the antecedent is supposed to take, providing the

necessary information for the reader to interpret the pronoun4.The relevant cognitive factors in

Example 5 are as follows. The reorientationproduced by the flashback to Whit Monday allows a breakbetween the pronouns, so that the second pronoun is not likely to co-refer with the first one (denoting

the sombre man). The readersknowledgeof the Whit Monday episode and thesalienceof that episode

to the plot make it possible for the scene to be reinstated and the character set to be inferred.

FROM UNFOLDING TEXTS TO A GRAMM AR OF COGNITION

Some linguists might argue that the type of analysis performed in the previous section is more a matterof usage or style than of grammatical theory. Many grammar books concentrate on decontextualised

sentences first and then, if they look at texts at all, move on to connected sentences at a later stage.

Hence Quirk et al(1985) finish their book with a chapter entitled From sentence to text (pp. 1421 -

1514), as if connected text is only to be looked at after a grammar of sentences has been proposed. An

alternative, however, is to create the initial grammar directly from contextualised sentences, moving

from texts to grammar. Although standard grammar textbooks do include some points of th is typewithin their canon of topics, they do not generally seem to be prepared to go beyond this traditional

repertoire of observations to take account of new findings from text linguistics. Most grammar

textbooks therefore include the observation that texts can begin in medias reswith the definite article,

but do not note the opposite point that referents can become indefinite part way through a story. These

observations do, however, have very similar status and it is difficult to argue that one has a place in a

grammar book and the other does not. It is only a historical matter that in medias resopenings have

been observed and perspective switches have not, probably due to the prominent position of in medias

resopenings at the beginning of texts. Similar ad hoctextual observations can be found with relation to

verb forms. Virtually every textbook includes a discussion of the historic present in oral storytelling,

explaining that there may be a switch from the past tense to the present tense at climactic moments in a

story. The observations made earlier in this paper about the past perfect are very similar in nature, butdo not seem to be noted. Moreover, the point that the past perfect may signal reorientation rather than a

straightforward time signal is fundamental to understanding the basic meaning of the verb.

In addition to looking at how grammatical features are actually used in real texts, it is also possible to

observe how grammar reflects the dynamic unfolding of a text5.This approach observes the text

unravelling, simulating the reading process. As Fillmore (1982, p. 254) points out:

The interpreters experience always has a clear dynamic aspect, to which our work has to pay closeattention. We need to show, for example, that a text can create expectations in the readers mind at one

point which it then satisfies or subverts at a later point......In order to present the dynamic aspect of a

readers experience with a text, we have developed a method of text analysis which takes the text one

segment at a time, asking ourselves at each point in this unrolling of the text something like, Having

read this far, what would it have figured out, or be puzzled by, or be expecting?

This method might appear only to be valid for each specific text, but it is possible to move from an

analysis of a number of specific texts to make broad statements about how certain textual functions are

achieved. So although the exact nature of the knowledge that a reader has about a character will be
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different for every text, the way in which knowledge can interact or override other factors (such as the

distance between a pronoun and the last mention of a character) can be observed.

This approach produces a grammar which takes account of cognitive factors such as the need for

orientation and the ability to switch perspective. It can be used to explain both the writers and readers

relationship with the text. The writer may be assumed to follow the communicative contract of

producing text which takes account of the cognitive abilities and limitations of an imagined reader. Of

course, each reader will respond differently as a result of factors such as their ability to rememberdetails, their attentiveness, their reading strategies, etc. Hence an analyst can only say which factors are

available to be taken into account rather than which are actually utilised in the reading process and howthey are weighted.

CONCLUSION

Once cognitive factors are incorporated into the analysis, grammatical theory becomes an extension of

textual processing in general, with the readers awareness of the development of a fictional world being

relevant in both cases. Grammatical theory then begins to reflect cognitive constraints and abilities.Some grammatical items provide explicit linguistic signalling to re-orientate the reader or identify a

specific referent. Other items provide less explicit information but rely on the reader 's knowledge of

the fictional world, particularly where information which is salient to the plot is concerned. Often,

basic storytelling techniques, such as switching perspective or creating a more vivid representation of

past events, will have an effect on the form used.The assumption that grammatical relations are linked to the dynamic unfolding of a text is ratherdifferent from traditional grammatical theory and cohesive approaches to linguistic patterns in texts.

Such approaches have focused on the linguistic surface of texts. So anaphora and cataphora have been

seen in terms of linguistic antecedence, whilst definiteness has been a matter of whether a referent has

or has not been mentioned. By contrast, a cognitive approach puts the reader back into the equation and

views the interpretation of grammatical items as being a matter of knowledge and inferencing.

Ultimately, therefore, a cognitive approach is likely to have more relevance for practical applications of

grammar such as artificial intelligence and education.

REFERENCES

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