Attributions of form and content: A discourse-structural account of reporting
Emar Maier
March 2023 

NEW TITLE: Attribution and the discourse structure of reports. I propose a discourse-level analysis of report constructions. Indirect dis- course, quotation, free indirect discourse, and attitude ascriptions are all analyzed in terms of a discourse relation of Attribution connecting two propositional discourse units: a frame (he said, she dreamed) and a (possibly complex, multi-sentence) report unit ("I'm an idiot", (that) she was president). I provide an underspecified semantics for the discourse relation of Attribution that involves a flexible notion of 'characterization'. A discourse unit may characterize a speech event by reproducing its linguistic surface form (as in quotation) or its propositional content (as in indirect speech and attitude reports), or both. I formalize this unified discourse-level Attribution approach within the general framework of SDRT, and apply it to direct, indirect, and free indirect reports that extend beyond the single embedded or quoted clause. This novel account is the first to do justice account for the complex internal dependencies within stretches of reported discourse that have thus far been mostly ignored by formal semanticists.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/005597 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	Dialogue and Discourse https://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/dad/issue/archive
keywords:	coherence, discourse structure, sdrt, attribution, free indirect discourse, quotation, reported speech, semantics
previous versions:	v3 [February 2023] v2 [August 2022] v1 [December 2020]
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