[osis-core] <discourseMarker>?

[Kirk Lowery]

Chris Little wrote:
 > On Wed, 28 May 2003, Patrick Durusau wrote:
 >
 >
 >> Adding the new element, <discourseMarker>.
 >
 >
 > Would anyone mind defining/explaining this to me?   This was
 > covered during one of the hours I was out of the meeting for class.
 >
 >
"Discourse" is one of those words which can be confusing. Here is the
dictionary defintion of discourse:

1 archaic : the capacity of orderly thought or procedure : RATIONALITY
2 verbal interchange of ideas; especially : CONVERSATION
3a: formal and orderly and usually extended expression of thought on a
subject
b: connected speech or writing
c: a linguistic unit (as a conversation or a story) larger than a sentence
4 obsolete : social familiarity

 > From my vague recollection of its description, this seems like a
 > type of <q>, doesn't it?

You are thinking of meaning "2"; the sense we are talking about is
"3c": a marker of some sort of text-unit.

 > I guess I don't follow what "appliesTo" means either, but assuming
 > a milestone type of "discourse", couldn't "preceding" & "following"
 > be subTypes?

The <discourseMarker> needs to contain the text segment that is the 
marker, hence it cannot be a milestone. The "appliesTo" attribute is 
necessary because we need to know whether the marker *begins* a 
discourse unit or *ends* it.

That's what makes most intuitive sense to me.

I'm not sure why Kees was so anxious to have this element now. It 
really is too generic for linguistic analysis...

Blessings,

Kirk
--
Kirk E. Lowery, Ph.D.
Director, Westminster Hebrew Institute
Adjunct Professor of Old Testament
Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia

Theorie ist, wenn man alles weiss und nichts klappt.
Praxis ist, wenn alles klappt und keiner weiss warum.
Bei uns sind Theorie und Praxis vereint:
nichts klappt und keiner weiss warum!