Relevance Relations in Discourse: A Study with Special Reference to Sissala

Using data from Sissala, a previously unanalyzed language, this book shows that the analysis of text and discourse is best approached from a cognitive rather than a strictly linguistic point of view. In two introductory chapters, Regina Blass argues that Sperber and Wilson's relevance theory, a general account of communication and cognition, sheds more light on conversational data than do alternative linguistic approaches based on such notions as cohesion, coherence, and topic. In subsequen...