Unpacking Ambiguity: The Interaction of Polysemous Discourse Markers and Non-DM Signals

TL;DR

This study explores how polysemous discourse markers in English interact with non-DM signals, revealing genre influences and the complexity of their co-occurrence patterns to better understand discourse coherence.

Contribution

It introduces a graded definition of DM polysemy and analyzes the relationship between DMs and non-DM signals across genres using correlation and regression methods.

Findings

Polysemous DMs co-occur with more diverse non-DMs.

Total number of co-occurring signals does not always increase with polysemy.

Genre significantly influences DM and non-DM interaction patterns.

Abstract

Discourse markers (DMs) like 'but' or 'then' are crucial for creating coherence in discourse, yet they are often replaced by or co-occur with non-DMs ('in the morning' can mean the same as 'then'), and both can be ambiguous ('since' can refer to time or cause). The interaction mechanism between such signals remains unclear but pivotal for their disambiguation. In this paper we investigate the relationship between DM polysemy and co-occurrence of non-DM signals in English, as well as the influence of genre on these patterns. Using the framework of eRST, we propose a graded definition of DM polysemy, and conduct correlation and regression analyses to examine whether polysemous DMs are accompanied by more numerous and diverse non-DM signals. Our findings reveal that while polysemous DMs do co-occur with more diverse non-DMs, the total number of co-occurring signals does not necessarily increase. Moreover, genre plays a significant role in shaping DM-signal interactions.