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Philology: scientific researches
Reference:

Zavarzina S.A. The Role of the Associative Mechanism of Inference in Constructing the Semantic Coherence of the Text

Abstract: This article deals with the study of the associative mechanism of inference and its role in the restoration of the text integrity. Inference shows the dependence of textual content on the background knowledge of the reader and contributes to the integration of linguistic as well as extralinguistic knowledge in the semantic structure of the text. The reason for this is that inference reveals the conceptually significant elements in the propositional structure of the text and, by means of associative connections, opens access to the cognitive structures which components are relevant to the text. The fact that inference relies on associative connections between semantic elements within conceptual systems allows the reader to reconstruct missing conceptual features in the semantic gap of the text space. Inference brings the associative mechanism to a minimum as it activates the meanings that correspond to the local context. These theses are proved by the results of the conceptual-semantic analysis of the story “Genesis and Catastrophe” by Roald Dahl with the use of the software TROPES V84 which enabled to identify and structure the relevant semantic units in the text. The main conclusion of the research is that inference is the mechanism that is based on associative connections in the semantic space of linguistic units and serves to find a relevant uncontroversial context while association is a free message for inference taking into accuont semantic connections. 

Keywords:

semantic structure of the text, semantic gap, semantic analysis, proposition, cognitive structures, cognitive mechanism, inference, computational method, background knowledge, associations

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