Discourse connectives across languages. Factors influencing their explicit or implicit translation

Zufferey, Sandrine (2016). Discourse connectives across languages. Factors influencing their explicit or implicit translation. Languages in Contrast, 16(2), pp. 264-279. John Benjamins 10.1075/lic.16.2.05zuf

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Coherence relations linking discourse segments can be communicated explicitly by the use of connectives but also implicitly through juxtaposition. Some discourse relations appear, however, to be more coherent than others when conveyed implicitly. This difference is explained in the literature by the existence of default expectations guiding discourse interpretation. In this paper, we assess the factors influencing implicitation by comparing the number of implicit and explicit translations of three polysemous French connectives in translated texts across three target languages: German, English and Spanish. Each connective can convey two discourse relations: one that can easily be conveyed implicitly and one that cannot be easily conveyed implicitly in monolingual data. Results indicate that relations that can easily be conveyed implicitly are also those that are most often left implicit in translation in all target languages. We discuss these results in view of the cognitive factors influencing the explicit or implicit communication of discourse relations.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of Linguistics and Literary Studies > Institute of French Language and Literature

UniBE Contributor:

Zufferey, Sandrine

Subjects:

400 Language > 410 Linguistics
400 Language > 440 French & related languages

ISSN:

1387-6759

Publisher:

John Benjamins

Language:

English

Submitter:

Sandrine Zufferey

Date Deposited:

10 Apr 2017 14:13

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 15:02

Publisher DOI:

10.1075/lic.16.2.05zuf

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.94342

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/94342

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