Centering the Margins

Functional Centering

Based on empirical evidence from a free word order language (German) we propose a fundamental revision of the principles guiding the ordering of discourse entities in the forward-looking centers within the centering model. We claim that grammatical role criteria should be replaced by indicators of the functional information structure of the utterances, i.e., the distinction between context-boun...

Dynamic Centering

Temporal Centering

We present a semantic and pragmatic account of the anaphoric properties of past and perfect that improves on previous work by integrating discourse structure, aspectual type, surface structure and commonsense knowledge. A novel aspect of our account is that we distinguish between two kinds of temporal intervals in the interpretation of temporal operators-discourse reference intervals and event ...

Tense, Mood, and Centering

I propose that tense and mood paradigms are grammatical centering systems. Specifically, English tenses form a temporal centering system, which monitors and updates topic times, whereas Kalaallisut moods form a modal centering system, which monitors and updates modal discourse referents. Nevertheless, English and Kalaallisut translation equivalents converge on the same truth conditions, due to ...

Centering in Italian

This chapter explores the correlation between centering and different forms of pronominal reference in Italian, in particular zeros and overt pronouns in subject position. In previous work (Di Eugenio, 1990), I proposed that such alternation could be explained in terms of centering transitions. In this chapter, I verify those hypotheses by means of a small corpus of naturally occurring data. In...