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<Paper uid="C86-1040">
  <Title>The Role of Inversion and PP-Fronting In Relating Discourse Elements: some implications for cognitive and computational models of Natural Language Processing</Title>
  <Section position="4" start_page="170" end_page="171" type="intro">
    <SectionTitle>
3. PP Fronting
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> PP-fronting is used to provide a continuity, a cohesion, in the text. It provides a useful progression of labels to which to attach the accompanying information. For example, an article by Lawrence (1985) opens with a fronted prepositional phrase which provides a tinm setting, or relation on the (narrative) time line, for the activity in the sentences which follows7: \])iscourse 6.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> befol'c I was tall enou~ to ride on the coaster ~, I spent many pleasant hours persuading my reluctant father to accompany me. (p. 4) The PP also provides a way to link up the topic (theme) of tile article to the opening statement of the article. The tlmmc is the &amp;quot;new adult&amp;quot; Amusement Parks. The article initial prepositional phrase picks out a particular item within an amusement park and associates the remembrances of the writer to it.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> The next sentence also has a fronted PP. This PP also links the next sentence to the article's main topic: Discourse 7.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> As an aficionado of amusement ~12~., 1 was overjoyed when our whole family finally flew to California to tackle Walt Disncy's extravaganza. (p.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4">  The next paragraph starts out witb yet another fronted temporal prepositional phrase, moving the time setting up to the present: Discourse 8.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> More than two decades later, I'm still journeying to parks.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6"> These first few examples of word order deviation all have the characteristic of giving the reading a temporal &amp;quot;focus&amp;quot; and order in a series of events that occur over a number of years. In order for a discourse processor to understaml this text, it  would have to have a place to start. The logical starting place would be with the label AMUSEMENT PARK, since this is in the title of the piece. Under this discourse representation label it could build other representations. The first representation that it would build would be about the author since this is the first matrix NP of the first sentence, D6. For the next sentence, D7, it would already know what type of temporal relation to assign to the proposition expressed in the matrix clause. The sentence in the next paragraph is easily processed since it advances the time of the preceding paragraph. Rather than building a representation of items and attaching to this a set of properties, these fronted PPs build an abstract representation of temporal items related by ttle time of each item.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="7"> The general theme of the article is amusement parks.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="8"> Ilowevcr, since the opening of the article is more a personal recollection rather than expository, tile information that needs to be organized is not information about particular objects, i.e. amusement parks, but rather episodes in the author's life. Each cpisode's temporal relation is specified by the fronted prepositional phrase. In general this is the function of fronted prepositional phrases, the specification of relations. This is a widely used tcchnique; used more than any other non-SVO pattern: The general hypothesis is that the first thing that one encounters in a sentcncc is a link to preceding information, either explicit or implied. The link provides the proper context in which to build tile new representation. It also provides the means for quickly searching the discourse space.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="9"> PP-fronting, like inversion, allows the reader to connect the current phrase, or sentence, being processed to an appropriate, and most likely salient, antecedent. For example Green (1980) comes to the same conclusion about inversions in sportscasters' speech. She notes that sportscasters use inversion when broadcasting play-by-play to identify tile player by his action and then name him: ~ ~ .and then ~ it was Dave Bonko.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="10"> Back come the I(ahoks with the ball.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="11"> An(.._~l in comes nnmber 5.~1, and that will be Mike Matakitis.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="12"> Into tile ~ for the New Trier West is Brenner.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="13"> The reason she gives is that this is helpful to tile TV viewers, since they don't have scorecards identifying the players. Shc goes on to say that in this way the viewer can single out the player on the screen before receiving his name. (This also gives the sportscaster time to look up the player's name if nccd be.) Further more she notes that sportscasters use this inverted style even when tile player arc well known or there numbers arc clearly visible. This observation fits in nicely with the modal being built here.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="14">  Thus like inversion PP-fronting is used to help link, via labels, i.e. focused material, one discourse representation to another.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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