The study examines the role that exemplification plays in academic discourse. As the latest approaches emphasize, discourse is an interactional activity involving as participants both the writer and the reader. In order to ensure the proper understanding of his/her message, writers make use of different discourse strategies such as reformulation, specification, generalization or elaboration. We focus on how exemplification, viewed as the satellite, contributes to the better recognition of the subject matter, which is understood as the nucleus. In the first two sections of the study, we present an overview of discourse relations which call for the use of constructions applied in exemplification. The second part, which is based on the linguistic material obtained from a close scrutiny of two classic articles from the field of linguistics and one linguistic textbook, is devoted to the description of how exemplification contributes to specification and elaboration. We try to find and describe the specific relations, for example set-member, whole-part, process-step and object-attribute which hold between the nucleus and the satellite. Finally, we attempt at listing discourse areas which call for exemplification. The study illustrates that what are known as separate discourse relations are in fact closely related.
The contribution presents the prepared complex text annotations in the Prague Dependency Treebank (topic-focus articulation, coreference and bridging anaphora, discourse relations) and proposes solutions of the following theoretical and practical questions that arise from the interplay of the syntactic and discourse structure: advantages and disadvantages of text annotation on linear text compared to tectogrammatical trees (importance of the syntactic information for the interpretation of the discourse structure), the discrepancy between syntactic and discourse structure concerning the surface position of a discourse connective, and an unexpressed thought or assumption as a discourse argument.
In biblical texts, repetition is very often seen by scholars as an indication of an addition or of different sources. In the Old Testament we find a group of speeches characterized by the double or triple use of the adverbial phrase ועתה within the same speech. The phenomenon of double ועתה appears in seventeen texts: Gen 44:18–34; 45:4b-13; Exod 3:7–10; Josh 22:2–5; Ruth 3:10–13; 1 Sam 24:18–22; 26:18–20; 2 Sam 2:5–7; 19:10–11; 1 Kgs 5:17–20 (cf. 2 Chr 2:2–9); 8:23–53 (cf. 2 Chr 6:14–42); 18:9–14; 1 Chr 29:10–19; 2 Chr 2:11–15; 28:9–11; Ezra 10:2–4; Dan 9:4–19. In four cases it has to do with a triple use of ועתה , namely in Josh 14:6–12; 1 Sam 25:24–31; 2 Sam 7:18–29 (cf. 1 Chr 17:16–27) and Ezra 9:6–15. This study analyses these texts and tries to answer the questions raised by the repetition of the particle ועתה : Why use the same locution twice? What are the common characteristics of these discourses? And what is the origin of this phenomenon? The first part of the research is dedicated to the presentation of the general characteristics of ועתה , while the second part concerns the persuasive character of these discourses. The third part consists in the analysis of the function of the double ועתה in the structure of the discourses, as compared with classical rhetoric. The fourth part identifies the context of the speeches with the double/triple ועתה . Finally, the fifth part is dedicated (1) to the importance of the argumentation introduced by the first ועתה in a specific discourse, as it is related to a request for forgiveness (deprecatio), and (2) to the origins of the use of the double ועתה as a rhetorical device.
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