Signalling in written text: a corpus-based approach 
Marie-Paule PLRY-WOODLEY 
ERSS/PRESCOT, Universit6 de Toulouse Le Mirail 
5 atl6es Antonio-Machado 
31058 Toulouse cedex. France 
pery @univ-tlse2. fr 
Abstract 
The concern of this paper is the signalling of 
segments and relations in written texts. It 
explores the role of visual formatting and its 
relation to lexical and other markers. Through a 
corpus-based study of a specific "text object" - 
definitions - in instructional texts, it brings 
together two models of text structure: RST and 
the model of text architecture. Unlike RST, this 
latter model gives a central place to signalling, 
establishing a theoretically-motivated relation of 
functional equivalence between markers based on 
typography or layout and lexico-syntactic 
markers. Definitions in the corpus are 
characterised on the basis of configurations of 
markers, and their occurrences charted in the 
global structure of the text. The distribution of 
definition patterns highlights the dynamic nature 
of text: markers of a specific text object vary 
systematically according to where it occurs in the 
structural hierarchy of the text. The study 
establishes a relation between text objects and 
RST segments, thus opening the range of 
discourse markers to include visual formatting, 
and providing RST segments with a textual 
status. 
Introduction 
Discourse relations are heterogeneous; text 
organisation seems to work on several distinct levels 
(Cf. Moore and Pollack 1992). This complexity has 
been the focus of much research recently, with a 
number of authors appealing to Halliday's tripartite 
distinction of linguistic metafunctions - ideational, 
interpersonal and textual - in order to articulate 
different perspectives on discourse organisation, or 
different levels of description (Maier and Ho W 1993, 
Bateman and Rondhuis 1997). These authors explored 
ways in which the metafunctions could provide an 
organising principle for the classification of discourse 
relations and markers (otherwise classified as semantic 
vs. pragmatic, subject-matter vs. presentational, etc.). 
The textual metafunction, described by Halliday and 
Hasan (1976) as "the text-forming component in the 
linguistic system", comprising "the resources that 
language has for creating text" (ibid: 26) has tended to 
receive the least developed treatment. The focus of 
this paper is the textual metafunction, and its aim is 
to contribute to an understanding of the "resources" 
that are exploited to create textual meaning, more 
specifically markers of relations and segment 
boundaries. 
My approach belongs in corpus linguistics, and is 
therctore guided by an awareness of the diversity of 
language productions. A first factor of variation is 
domain: a number of studieg are concerned with the 
linguistic characterisation of domain sublanguages 
(Grishman and Kittredge 1986; Sager, Friedman et al. 
1987) A second factor is genre, which subsumes 
social /'unction, discourse purpose, channel. This 
study focusses on written texts with a specific 
discourse function -instructional- within a 
particular domain: software manuals. The specificity 
of written texts and its relevance to an understanding 
of discourse organisation must be stressed: firstly, in 
most cases, writing implies that the writer 1 and the 
intended audience do not share the context of 
communication. This has two major consequences for 
the organisation of written text: a) a written text is 
generally a monologue, where topics are introduced. 
continued or dropped not through negociation between 
discourse participants but on the sole basis of the 
writer's representations and intentions; b) there is a 
requirement for explicitness in the signalling of the 
various levels of meaning. Secondly, a written text is 
a visual object, and its visual properties are directly 
involved - and exploited by readers - in the 
construction of meaning. The choice of instructional 
texts derives from a hypothesis linked to the 
explicitness requirement: the social function of these 
texts is such that their writers are likely to try and 
leave as little interpretative leeway as possible. They 
therefore constitute a good starting point for a study 
of organisational signals. 
Discourse theorists are generally agreed on a recursive 
structuring involving text segments and discourse 
relations. Many questions remain open, however, over 
the signalling of relations and the nature and status of 
the segments. In RST. the authors stress the absence 
of specific signalling of rhetorical relations. As for 
the segments concerned, the minimal units are defined 
as "typically clauses", but Mann and Thompson 
specify that the relations in fact hold between the 
1 I use the word writer for convenience, even though 
the production of a text may involve several agents. 
79 
meanings and intentions represented by the clause 
(Mann and Thompson 1989; Mann, Matthiessen and 
Thompson 1992). In other words, there is an 
exploitable correspondence between the syntactic unit 
clause, identifiable on the basis of surface 
characteristics, and the unit of meaning which is the 
argument of a relation. But what of the larger 
segments formed out of these basic units? Do they 
have a status of their own? Can they be identified on 
the basis of surface signalling? Some positive 
answers are proposed here, in the light of a model 
which describes texts in terms of an architecture of 
objects, and on the basis of a study of a specific text 
object - definitions - in software manuals. The 
notion of marker is broadened to include typographical 
and layout features, which we will see can be 
functionally equivalent to lexical markers. 
1 The textual level 
Halliday (Halliday and Hasan 1976; Halliday 1985) 
examines "the text-forming component in the 
linguistic system" at three levels of organisation: 
- the clause: use of word order to signal theme, of 
phonological prominence to signal new information; 
- the group or clause complex: use of .syntax to 
signal interclausal relations, of punctuation to mark 
the sentence: 
- the text: use of cohesion devices (reference, 
substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, lexical cohesion). 
What I propose is an extension of this examination of 
"resources that language has for creating text" 
focussing on written text. Virbel and his group 
(Virbel 1985; Virbel 1989; Pascual 1991) have done 
extensive work on the visual aspects of text 
organisation, as one realisation of what will be called 
"formatting", though, as will be seen, it is formatting 
in a somewhat broader sense than the usual acception. 
The question which immediately arises is whether 
visual Lurrnatting can be seen as part of the resources 
of language. In answer to this question, Virbel (1985) 
convincingly shows the relation of functional 
equivalence (if one sets aside considerations of 
appropriateness to genre and stage in the text 
development) between formulations based on visual 
formatting and discursive tbrmulations. The made-up 
examples in figure 1 will explain: 
1. 
l.! 
1.2 
1.3 
I° 
In this section 1 shall present three ways of 
approaching First, . 
The second approach 
Thirdlv ...... 
Definitions 
A: 
B: C: 
A is 
B can be defined as 
We call C I 
Figure 1: Formatting-based vs. 
In the first example, the claim is that the same 
structuring is created - and meant to be recognised by 
the reader - in the text images on the left and on the 
right. Similarly, in the second example, three 
definitions are formulated, and meant to be recognised 
as definitions, in both cases. The formulations on the 
left are based mostly on layout, typography and 
enumerations, while those on the right, though not 
devoid of visual formatting, rely more on discursive 
means. These examples have been made fairly clear- 
cut for the purposes of the demonstration, but in- 
between formulations are obviously possible. The 
resources available for written text organisation thus 
appear as a continuum from wholly discursive to 
wholly visual, There seems to be no hard and fast 
conventions for layoutand typographical 
enhancement, but rather a general principle of 
conu'ast. 
discursive formulations 
On these observations the main tenets of the model of 
text architecture were formulated (Virbel 1985: 
Pascual 1991 ): 
- these formulations are perceived as "equivalent" 
because they are interpreted as performing the same 
"text act", here organising and defining. Success of 
such text acts is that they be recognised, and that the 
text segments concerned (the arguments of the 
pertormative) be understood as sub-parts or as 
definitions. These are metalinguistic performatives 
whose performativity is directed at the text itself as 
text, and not at its ideational content or interpersonal 
purpose. 
- the textual metalanguage, exemplified by the fully 
discursive formulations, is part of the language, and 
therefore open to description in terms of operator- 
argument relations (after Harris 1968: 1982). The 
operators are verbs such as organise, entitle, illustrate, 
conclude, define...: their arguments are text segments 
called text objects. A text object is therefore a 
80 
segment corresponding to a specific metalinguistic 
formulation and signalled by formatting. The notion 
of formatting 2 covers lexico-syntactic, typographical, 
layout, and punctuation markers. 
This model of text organisation centres on the 
identification and characterisation of segments at the 
textual level. To what extent do text objects 
identifiable through formatting correspond to 
segments at other levels of description? If a 
correspondence can be established, the notion of 
marker, mostly geared toward lexical markers, could 
be radically broadened. But this requires that the 
relations between the textual and the other levels of 
text organisation be better understood. In order to 
broach these questions, our approach (Pascual and 
Prry-Woodley 1997a; 1997b; 1997c) has been to 
examine a specific text object in a subset of a 
particular genre. Some elements from the study of 
definitions in a software manual are presented in 
section 2. 
2 Definitions in a software manual 
2.1 Methodological preliminaries 
2.1.1 The corpus 
Our corpus consists of three software manuals. For 
the initial exploration of the text object definition, we 
selected a limited sub-corpus extracted from the 
manual of a text analysis and categorisation system 
called SATO 3. The manual is organised in 7 chapters, 
numbered I to 7, and a number of peripheral objects 
such as acknowledgments and index. Our sub-corpus 
is chapter 6 (78 pages. 49 000 words), which is 
devoted to the description of the commands of one of 
the two main modules making up the system. The 
analysis below focusses on section 6.1, dedicated to a 
specific type of commands called "analyseurs". 
2.1.2 The method 
We produced a representation of the text in terms of 
the higher levels of architecture (parts, titles, 
paragraphs, examples, etc.). This representation was 
obtained on the basis of a top-down analysis by a first 
coder, the starting point being the visual formatting 
features - traces on the text's surface of the textual 
metalanguage - which make these text objects 
identifiable. Jointly. a bottom-up RST analysis was 
performed by a second coder. Definitions were then 
identified intuitively by the two coders. There was 
general agreement, though there remains some 
uncertain cases which will not be dealt here. 
Definitions in the corpus are signalled by 
configurations of lexico-syntactic, typographical and 
layout markers. Our final model of the grammar of 
definitions in this corpus, presented fully in Pascual 
and P6ry-Woodley (1997b), is the result of several 
cycles of approximation-refinements. It presents a 
number of basic patterns which are one level of 
abstraction removed from the surface forms: they 
allow the grouping together of surface forms in terms 
of an analysis in Harrisian elementary phrases and 
transformations. 
2.2 Representing the higher levels of 
text structure 
2.2.1 A synthetic representation 
The partial representation in figure 2 is a hybrid one: 
it shows the convergence between an analysis in 
terms of text objects and an analysis in terms of 
rhetorical relations. The schemas are therefore labelled 
both in terms of clausal units and relations, and in 
terms of text objects (see key below figure 2). "Part" 
is used as a generic term subsuming chapter, section, 
sub-section, etc. When it coincides with numbered 
parts in the manual, the original numbers are used 
(part 6.1.1); non-numbered parts are attributed a 
number (parts 26 to 31). For reasons of readability 
an d space, figure 2 focusses on part 6.1.14. 
The structure represented displays great regularity: it 
is a series of nested elaborations, which correspond to 
nested definitions. As mentioned before, part 6.1 of 
our manual describes/defines a set of commands called 
"analyseurs". At the first level (not shown), there is a 
preamble (pre 1) which is the nucleus of eight 
elaborations (parts 6.1.1 to 6.1.8) dealing with each 
"analyseur" in turn. Pre 1 is itself an elaboration 
schema. Part 6.1.1 is structured in the same way as 
part 6.1, with a preamble (pre 2) and an elaboration. 
Again the preamble is an elaboration schema. The 
body of part 6.1.1 is again an elaboration schema 
with a preamble (pre 3) as its nucleus, and three 
elaborations, of which the last two, an explanation 
and an example, will be analysed no further. The 
analysis of the remaining elaboration (parts 26 to 31) 
reveals a more complex structure, where related spans 
are not strictly adjacent5: text-span 7-8 and clause 9 
are the nuclei of elaboration relations involving parts 
26 and 27 (elaborating 7-8) and parts 28 to 31 
(elaborating 9). 
2 The original term is "mise en forme matrrielle". 
3 SATO (Syst~me d'Analyse de Textes par Ordinateur) 
is a system developed by F. Daoust at the Centre 
d'ATO of the University of Quebec at Montreal. It is 
the software used to search for occurrences of 
definitions in our corpus. 
4 The reader is asked to ignore at this stage the 
indications of definition types (BP, RPI-5), which 
will be dealt with in sections 2.3 and 2.4 below. 
5 I realise this is not conform to the tenets of RST. 
This anomaly seems linked to the list structure 
typical of the genre, which will be discussed later. 
81 
part 6.1: pre 1 and part 6.1.1 
pre 1 part 6.1.1 elaboration 
1 2 3-6 
BP pre 2 
part 6.1.1 (body) 
re 2 part 6.1. l (body) 
lab I elaboration 
3 4-6 7-9 10-32 
RP1 pre 3 part 26-31 expl 1 exa 1 
part 6.1.1 : pre 3 and part 26-31 
pre 3 
7-8 9 10-13 14-18 
RP5 RP3 part 26 part 27 
Key to figure 2: 
elaboration 
19-22 23-24 
part 28 part 29 
Figure 2. RST/archirecture representation 
1-32 = clausal units expl = explanation 
pre = preamble exa = example 
25-26 27-32 
part 30 part 31 
2.2.2 Architectural segments vs. rhetorical 
segments 
In this analysis, text objects, identified on the basis of 
formatting features, are all RST text-spans. This 
implies that formatting features can also be markers 
of rhetorical segments. The authors of RST. whilst 
stating that the analysis can be approached top-down 
as well as bottom-up, do not give any indication as to 
the identification of high-level segments. Yet analysts 
performing a top-down RST analysis are bound to use 
formatting to delimit high-level text-spans, as part of 
the interpretation process. The model of text 
architecture is an attempt at making explicit this 
aspect of text-meaning production. The congruence 
between architectural and rhetorical segments 
displayed in the reference text may not be 
generalisable. It is probably desirable, however, at 
least in certain genres, and could be developed into a 
principle in generation and composition instruction. 
In this analysis, RST text-spans acquire a status at the 
textual level. This may be an organisational status, 
such as parts at different levels of the hierarchy, or a 
functional status, such as definitions. There appears to 
be a strong correspondence between some text objects 
82 
and particular relation schemas: the definition patterns 
detailed in the next section are the nuclei of 
definitional text-spans which are all elaboration 
schemas 6. Finally, definitions can be made up of 
definitions, just as elaboration schemas can be made 
up of elaboration schemas. 
2.3 Characterising definitions 
2.3.1 The patterns 
Definitions in our text are signalled through a 
combination of discursive and visual formatting 
features. These are sufficiently recurrent and regular to 
allow the formulation of a basic pattern (BP in Table 
1), where every distributional slot is filled, and of five 
reduced patterns (RPI to RP5), where one or more 
element is missing. There is a gradation in the 
number of reductions: RPI and RP2 involve one 
reduction; RP3 and RP4 involve 2 reductions; RP5 
involves 3 reductions. 
6 Other such correspondences between particular 
expressions of the textual metalanguage 
(metasentences) and RST relations have been 
suggested in Pascual and P6ry-Woodley (1997a). 
Given the objectives of this paper, Table l only 
shows patterns actually occurring in the corpus. If the 
aim was to generate all possible formulations, 
whether in order to capture all potential forms for 
automatic recognition, or for text generation, it would 
obviously be easy to complete the table. 
The patterns always coincide with the beginning of a 
paragraph; the word being defined is always 
typographically marked (capitals, bold, inverted 
commas). These layout and typographical features are 
an integral part of the patterns. 
BP 
no reduction 
RP1 
reduction Vi Nc2 
Ncl 
§ La commande 
The command 
§ L'analyseur 
The analyser 
Nn 
Distance 
Distance 
COMPARAISON 
COMPARISON 
Vi Nc2 
¢st un analyseur 
lexico-statistique. 
is a lexico-statis. 
tical analyser. 
Vc 
Elle permet de 
It is used to 
permet de 
is used to 
ml| 
comparer statistiquement les lexiques de deux 
sous-textes quelconques 
d'un corpus statistically compare the 
lexica of any two sub- 
texts o(a corpus 
marquer ... 
mark ,.. 
RP2 
reduction Nc l 
RP3 
reduction Ncl, Vi 
Nc2 
RP4 
reduction Vi Nc2 Vc 
RP5 
reduction Ncl,Vi 
Nc2. Vc 
§ L'analyseur 
The anal;x'ser 
§ Le filtre 
The filter 
§ EXPORTER 
EXPORT 
SEGMENTATION 
SEGMENTA~ON 
§APPLIQUER 
APPLY 
est un patron de fouille 
is a search pattern 
qui perrnet de 
which is used 
t(I 
permet d' 
is ttsed to 
definir ... 
define... 
enregistrer ... 
record ... 
d6coupe ... 
segments.. 
I alflCe ... 
SI~IFIS. .. 
Table 1: Definition patterns 
Key (the classes are distributional classes which have been functionally labelled, apart from the final verb phrase): 
Nc: classifier noun Vc : "can-verb" {permettre. servir a, avoir pour effet, 
Nn : domain-specific name 6tre utilis6 pour .... } 
Vi : "is-verb" {6tre, ddsigner} § : indicates the start of a paragraph. 
2.3.2 Interpreting the variation 
A definition typically consists of two functional 
elements: the class, expressed by a hypernym, and the 
specificity, expressed by a modifier attached to the 
hypernym. Table 1 shows that the corpus displays 
little variation as regards the specificity (Vc VP or 
just VP), but the class can be expressed twice (Ncl 
and Nc2), once (Nc2) or not at all (in RP5). Before 
moving on to the next section, concerned with the 
distribution of these different patterns within the 
hierarchy of the text, I shall report some recent 
observations oil "class-less" definitions: all 
occurrences of RP5 are found in list structures where 
the class is indeed expressed, but in the header of the 
list and not in every definitional item. Ongoing 
analysis of other software manuals confirms the 
regularities underlying the variations in the use of 
lists in definitions. The three examples in Figure 3 
show how the class relation may be formulated with 
differing levels of reliance on visual clues. In the 
rightmost formulation, the interpretation of "Display" 
as a type of command relies solely on layout clues: 
Three commands may be applied " J Commands: 
Display is a command which \[ - Display: this command ... 
Export is a command allowing .... I - Export: this command ... 
Print is a command which .... \[ - Print: this command ... 
Commands: 
- Display: <function> 
- Export: <function> 
- Print: <function> 
Figure 3." Lists and the expression of class 
83 
2.4 Mapping definitions onto the 
overall structure 
The RST/architecture representation in figure 2 above 
indicates the position of different definition patterns in 
the structure. The nucleus of the preamble 
(elaboration schema) to part 6.1 is a basic pattern 
(BP). At the next level down, the nucleus of the 
preamble to part 6.1.1 is a reduced pattern of type 
RPI (one reduction). Down one more level, tge 
preamble to the body of part 6.1.1 comprises two 
reduced patterns of type RP5 and RP3 respectively, 
i.e. patterns having lost two or three elements 
compared with the basic pattern. There is therefore an 
apparent correlation between definition type and text 
structure. We went on to investigate this correlation 
for the whole of part 6.1. The results are presented in 
figure 4 in terms of occurrences of definition patterns 
in the numbered text parts. They show that the 
distribution suggested in figure 2 is a constant over 
the 8 sub-parts. The definitions, or rather definition 
nuclei- as the elaborations must be seen as part of 
the definitions- which initiate each sub-part (6.1 to 
6.4) are all representatives of the basic pattern. One 
step below in the hierarchy, the definition nuclei 
which initiate parts 6. I. I to 6.1.8 are mostly reduced 
patterns of type RPI (6 out of 8), with one instance 
of basic pattern and one of reduced pattern RP4. In the 
parts which make up parts 6. I. I to 6.1.8, the patterns 
showing multiple reductions dominate': 
Part 6 
Part 6.1 : BP 
Part 6.1.I : RPI 
Part 6.1.1(body): RP5 
RP3 
Part 6.1.2 : RPI 
Part 32: RP3 
RP5 
RP5 
RP5 
Part 
Part 
Part 
Part 
Part 
Part 
Part 6.2: BP 
Part 6.3: BP 
Part 6.4: BP 
6.1.3 : BP 
6.1.4 : RPI 
6.1.5 : RPI 
6.1.6 : RP1 
6.1.7 : RP4 
6.1,8 : RPI 
Figure 4. Distribution of definition patterns in part 6 
This study attempts to relate a fine-grained analysis of 
a specific text object and the organisation of a large 
segment of text, The regularities in the distribution of 
7 The detail of this level has only been given for parts 
6.1.1 and 6.1.2 for readability's sake. The distribution 
is however constant throughout. 
84 
definition patterns are of interest with respect to the 
dynamic aspect of text construction, Definitions in 
the corpus are seen as text objects which correspond 
to elaboration schemas whose nuclei are characterised 
by regular formatting patterns (lexico-syntactic, 
typographical and layout). Within these patterns, the 
classifier Nc states the class (what type of command it 
is) while the modifier (Vc VP) expresses the 
specificity. What the distribution of these patterns 
within the text as a whole shows is that the 
expression of the class can disappear at the lower 
hierarchical levels, when the classificatory elements 
have already appeared at structurally higher levels, 
leaving definitions entirely focussed on the functional 
aspects (what the command does). With each new part 
there is therefore an evolution from definitions which 
situate the command within the universe of the 
system to definitions which focus solely on what can 
be done with the command. 
Conclusion 
The above representations come out of a study 
starting from premises somewhat apart from most 
work on discourse organisation. The first is that there 
is a specific textual level of organisation which is 
signalled through what has been called "formatting". 
This textual level is seen as participating in the 
construction of textual meaning, in an interaction 
with other levels which has yet to be fully 
understood. The second is that formatting may be to 
some extent constrained by genre and domain, and that 
it therefore makes sense to identify generalisable traits 
within a genre/domain before going on to look for 
constants across genres/domains, The third is that it 
may be enlightening to focus on a specific text 
object, hut view its behaviour within the text as a 
whole. This leads us to encompass a much larger text 
than is usually the case in detailed studies of discourse 
organisation, while adopting a fine-grained analysis 
for the text object under study. 
Formatting as presented here provides a novel and 
theoretically-motivated way of envisaging the textual 
metafunction. It opens up the notion of discourse 
marker for written text, situating typographical and 
layout clues in a relation of functional equivalence 
with "classical" linguistic clues. Where there is 
congruence between RST and architectural segments, 
formatting markers are clues to discourse structure. 
The regular lexico-syntactic, layout and typographical 
patterns which we have called definition patterns have 
a dual status: they signal definitional text objects as 
well as being nuclei of a particular type of elaboration 
schema. 
Whereas RST analysis is presented as essentially 
based on an interpretative process, fundamentally 
independent from any specific surface markers, the 
analysis of architecture centres on the signalling of 
textual objects through formatting. This paper has 
brought to light some convergence between the 
results of the two analyses in texts subject to high 
requtrements of explicit signalling. This is a step 
towards understanding the linguistic resources brought 
into play for the signalling of discourse relations. 
Future work on these issues could take a number of 
distinct but potentially converging viewpoints: 
starting from special formatting devices, such as 
parentheses or foomotes; starting from specific text 
objects, to extend the study of definitions to other 
corpora or to examine other functional text objects 
such as examples or conclusions: taking particular 
relations as the starting point, to investigate relations 
which are reputed to have no marker - e.g. elaboration 
- in the light of the broader conception of signalling 
developed here. 
Acknowledgements 
This paper derives from work carried out over several 
years with Elsa Pascual, who died accidentally last 
summer. It is written in her memory. 
I would like to thank A. Borillo and J. Rebeyrolle 
(ERSS. Toulousel, C. Garcia-Debanc. C. Luc and 
J. Virbel (PRESCOT, Toulouse), and D. Scott 
~ITRI. Brighton) for their comments and suggestions 
on earlier versions of this paper. 

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