A New Architecture for Functional Grammar (Functional Grammar Series)

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The question of discourse representation 105

Preconditions(M 101 ) =
BELIEVE (P 1 NOT (KNOW (P 2 C(m 151 ))))
BELIEVE (P 1 NOT (KNOW (P 2 C(m 152 ))))
WANT (P 1 KNOW (P 2 C(m 151 )))
WANT (P 1 KNOW (P 2 C(m 152 )))

Postconditions(M 101 ) =
KNOW (P 2 C(m 151 ))
KNOW (P 2 C(m 152 ))
BELIEVE (P 1 KNOW (P 2 C(m 151 )))
BELIEVE (P 1 KNOW (P 2 C(m 152 )))
NOT (WANT (P 1 KNOW (P 2 C(m 151 ))))
NOT (WANT (P 1 KNOW (P 2 C(m 152 ))))
Outcome(M 101 ) = Postconditions(M 101 )

Preconditions(M 102 ) =
BELIEVE (P 2 NOT (KNOW (P 1 C(m 153 ))))
BELIEVE (P 2 NOT (KNOW (P 1 C(m 154 ))))
WANT (P 2 KNOW (P 1 C(m 153 )))
WANT (P 2 KNOW (P 1 C(m 154 )))

Postconditions(M 102 ) =
KNOW (P 1 C(m 153 ))
KNOW (P 1 C(m 154 ))
BELIEVE (P 2 KNOW (P 1 C(m 153 )))
BELIEVE (P 2 KNOW (P 1 C(m 154 )))
NOT (WANT (P 2 KNOW (P 1 C(m 153 ))))
NOT (WANT (P 2 KNOW (P 1 C(m 154 ))))
Outcome(M 102 ) = Postconditions(M 102 )

Clearly, any contextual description will have to be selective. There is no
possibility of including every fact about the situation. The basic principle is
to include what one feels to be relevant, insofar as one’s knowledge and the
evidence permits. Thus, our example is intended merely to provide an idea
of how a contextual description might look.
One particular point to note is how the multimedia aspects of discourse,
including non-verbal communication, have been allowed for in the contex-
tual level. Admittedly, this probably does not go far enough to satisfy the
point made by Kress and Van Leeuwen about the multimodal nature of
text, but it is, hopefully, a step in the right direction, as it explicitly incor-
porates multimedia phenomena into the FDG-related framework.

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