3 Sensus: the sense-semantic organisation of the vehiculum

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This text-sentence—like text-sentences and texts in general—can be assigned the following types of sensus: (i) conceptual

verbal sensus (the sensus we obtain by combining the verbal sensus which can be assigned to the individual words of the textsentence in the given verbal context); (ii) conceptual non-verbal sensus (a picture-like mental-image which we create (which

arises in us) during the reception of this text-sentence); (iii) non-conceptual sensus (the experience or feeling which we

associate with the conceptual verbal and/or non-verbal sensus of this text-sentence). Let us investigate now some aspects of

these three sensus-types.

Conceptual verbal sensus.



Three aspects of the conceptual verbal sensus can be distinguished: the relational, the inferential and the configurational.

From the relational aspect the conceptual verbal sensus is an elementary proposition or a proposition-complex. An

elementary proposition is, to put it simply, a relation expressed in the form predicate+its arguments; the relation indicated by

the predicate exists among the entities represented as arguments. (In the frames of this presentation it is not possible to discuss

questions concerning the propositions in detail. In what follows I will represent the units to be handled as propositions in a

form which is near to the surface structure and will mark them off from other parts of the text by using another type of

setting.) For example, in the part of the above-quoted text-sentence which precedes ‘without’, the following two propositions

are manifested: (i) IT WAS NOT THE CASE, THAT DODO COULD DO SOMETHING, where this DO SOMETHING is

(ii) DODO ANSWERS THIS QUESTION. In the given verbal context the reference of the expressions ‘Dodo’ and ‘this

question’ are known. In a text, as in the text-sentence quoted, however, not only is the reference a relevant factor, but also the

co-reference: we are to recognise that ‘it/its’ in ‘it stood’ and in ‘its forehead’ are co-referent with the expression ‘Dodo’;

further, to recognise that the expressions ‘thought’ and ‘finger’ are to be understood as the thought and the finger of it

(namely the Dodo). One can easily see that for these recognitions language competence alone does not suffice. (I will return to

the question of reference/co-reference later.)

The inferential aspect is a highly relevant aspect of verbal communication. It is the capacity to draw inferences which

renders the economy of communication possible (among other topics, the understanding of a text without it being necessary

for everything to be set forth in detail), even if on the other hand false inferences may cause confusion in the communication.

There are numerous types of inferential conceptual verbal sensus, but I only want to illustrate four of them by examples, (i) In

the verbal context in which the expression ‘beautiful Soup!’ has been repeated several times, it is not at all difficult to

perceive (to create the acoustic figura of) the expressions ‘Beauootiful Soo-oop’ and ‘beauti-FUL SOUP!’ (in AAW Ch. X;

Carroll 1982:95) in the right way; similarly, after the expression ‘and the moral of that is’ has been repeated several times, it

is easy to identify the expression-fragment ‘and the m____’ (AAW Ch. IX in (Carroll 1982:81). This inference-type can be called

morpho-syntactic inference, (ii) We understand an utterance/text-sentence in most cases in such a way that we assign to the

individual words of the utterance/text-sentence our knowledge about the object/property/… indicated by the word in question.

(This knowledge is called, when represented in an explanatory dictionary, an ‘explication’, and, when inferred, an

‘implicature’.) The assignment of the explications may, of course, also be carried out on the quoted text-part beginning with

‘This question…’. We should also bear in mind that explications are not definitions—i.e. are not implications in both

directions—, the explicans does not represent the necessary and sufficient condition of the explicandum. Thus it is often

difficult to name an entity from the knowledge of certain properties of it. AAW offers examples illustrating this difficulty,

e.g. the following one: in Ch. VI we can read that ‘suddenly a footman in livery came running out of the wood’ (Carroll 1982:

50); we can assign to the word ‘footman’ the following knowledge: ‘liveried servant for…’, where ‘servant’ is understood as

a ‘person who has undertaken (…) to carry out the orders of an individual…’, i.e. a footman is a liveried person. (As to both

explications cf. The Concise Oxford Dictionary; the italics are mine.) Only if we are aware of the difficulties concerning the use

of explications is it possible to understand the remark of the narrator standing in brackets after the expression quoted: ‘(she

considered him to be a footman because he was in livery: otherwise, judging by his face only, she would have called him a

fish)’. As a possible solution to this problem, in the text to follow the indication ‘Fish-Footman’ also occurs, (iii) Among the

inferences there are some which emphasise the conceptual verbal sensus of the text-sentence in question by contrast. In Ch.

XI of AAW we find an example which also contains the background of the contrast explicitly (Carroll 1982:100): ‘“I am a

poor man, your Majesty”, he began. /“You’re a very poor speaker,” said the King.’ The elements in italics in the text (on

which in living speech an extra stress would be laid) can be assigned the following inferences: You are not only simply poor,

but very poor, and not as a man, but as a speaker. The function of setting some elements in the text of AAW in italics—if they

are not representations of titles—is to express differentiating semantic stress, (iv) The fourth inference-type to be mentioned here

may be called syllogistic inference; such an inference can be found, for example, in AAW Ch. XII: ‘At this moment the King

(…) read out from his book, “Rule Forty-two. (…)” /(…)/ “It’s the oldest rule in the book,” said the King. / “Then it ought to

be Number One,” said Alice,’ (Carroll 1982:105). Syllogistic inferences may often be applied in different ways to one and the

same text-part. In AAW Ch. VII we can find an example to illustrate this: ‘“Take some more tea”, the March Hare said to

Alice, very earnestly. / “I’ve had nothing yet,” Alice replied in an offended tone: “so I ca’n’t take more.” / “You mean you



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can’n’t take less,” said the Hatter: “It’s very easy to take more than nothing.”’ (Carroll 1982:65). The inferences explicitly

contained in these text-parts are partly also implicatures since in the first inference the explication assignable to the expression

‘oldest rule’ plays a role and in the second one the explication assignable to the relation ‘nothing’—‘more’—‘less’.

The configurational aspect is concerned with the arrangement of the individual pieces of information in the given text

sentences. It depends on the individual characteristics of the given language which configuration is admissible and which is

not, which one alters the conceptual sensus of the text sentence and which one does not. The text sentence ‘This question…’

(see above) might as well begin in the following way: ‘The Dodo could not answer this question’—but it does not begin like

this. Similarly we might also alter the order of the lexical elements in other parts of this text sentence. Further, one might also

change the order of the lexical elements in more than one text sentence at the same time. The questions are: What is being

changed, if the alteration of an arrangement does not alter the relational and the inferential sensus? When is changing the

order of merely stylistic nature, when is it of another nature and what is characteristic of it? In AAW we find examples both

for changing the order which alters the relational sensus and for changing the order which leaves the relational sensus

unchanged. In Ch. VII, for instance, the text part

‘Then you should say what you mean,’ the March Hare went on.

‘I do,’ Alice hastily replied; ‘at least—at least I mean what I say—that’s the same thing, you know.’

‘Not the same thing a bit!’ said the Hatter. ‘Why, you might just as well say that “I see what I eat” is the same thing

as “I eat what I see”!’

(Carroll 1982:61), and in Ch. VI the text part

The Fish-Footman began by producing from under his arm a great letter, nearly as large as himself, and this he handed

over to the other, saying, in a solemn tone, ‘For the Duchess. An invitation from the Queen to play croquet.’ The FrogFootman repeated, in the same solemn tone, only changing the order of the words a little, ‘From the Queen. An

invitation for the Duchess to play croquet.’

(Carroll 1982:51).

Conceptual non-verbal sensus.



It is a well-known fact that in many cases we not only understand the received text but we can also imagine the states of

affairs expressed in it. It is also well-known that the understanding of a text is often disturbed, if we cannot imagine what the

text is about. Both facts hold, of course, only for texts for which it is possible to construct pictorial mental images; the

conceptual non-verbal sensus only plays a role in connection with such texts.

The conceptual non-verbal sensus, too, has a relational, an inferential and a configurational aspect. The constituent ‘and it

stood for a long time with one finger pressed upon its forehead’ of the text-sentence analysed above will serve as an example

to shed light on some questions concerning these aspects. This constituent can be assigned the following two propositions: (i)

IT WAS THE CASE THAT DODO STOOD FOR A LONG TIME, and (ii) (AT THE SAME TIME) IT WAS THE CASE

THAT DODO PRESSED ONE (OF ITS) FINGER(S) UPON ITS FOREHEAD. These two propositions can be considered as

the conceptual verbal representation of the relational aspect of the conceptual non-verbal sensus. It is obvious that the relation

expressed in these propositions (a state—we know that the state of thinking is meant) can be imagined in different ways. The

question of whether the comment in brackets in the analysed text part ‘(the position in which you usually see Shakespeare, in

the pictures of him)’ provides any help for imagining this state can only be investigated if the text-constitutive role of irony is

accounted for, as well. The pictorial mental image of a relation/state—thus also the pictorial mental image of the above

propositions—is the configurational mental representation of this relation/ state. Repetition-tests or narrative texts show that

the majority of readers assign inferences to the mental images in the same way as to the conceptual verbal sensus.

In a dominantly-verbal text furnished with illustrations, the illustrations have the role of fixing in some way the pictorial

manifestation of a character/ situation. This function can also be well recognised in AAW, where certain characters could

hardly be imagined by the reader without illustrations. In some places there is an explicit reference to this assistance, cf. in Ch.

IX the following text part (Carroll 1982:83): ‘They very soon came upon a Gryphon, lying fast asleep in the sun. (If you don’t

know what a Gryphon is, look at the picture.)’

To conclude my comments on conceptual non-verbal sensus I wish to emphasise that while I was only concerned here with

the pictorial mental images, the role of the non-pictorial images (acoustic or other images accessible to other sense-organs)

may also be (and to the same degree) relevant, and a text theory aiming at an all-embracing approach to text should

investigate their function and organisation, too.

Non-conceptual sensus.



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During the process of understanding a text we not only understand its (conceptually verbal) lexical material and create a

conceptual non-verbal mental image assignable to it; we also very often reactivate the experience we have had concerning the

state-of-affairs configuration we think to be expressed in the text. (For example, we were also in a situation where we could

not answer a question immediately and had to think a lot, and in this situation we might also have stood in a similar posture to

the Dodo.) This experience we call ‘non-conceptual sensus’.

The three types of language-specific sensus discussed above are also different from the aspect of intersubjectivity: we can

consider the conceptual verbal sensus to be the most intersubjective, while the least intersubjective is probably the nonconceptual sensus.

Textural and compositional cohesion.



In this subsection I will deal exclusively with some aspects of the cohesion of the conceptual verbal sensus.

The carriers of textural cohesion are (i) recurring verbal units of the same order (as sense-semantic units), (ii) recurring coreferential sense-semantic units, and (iii) recurring units belonging to one and the same semantic field. Since group (i) of the

cohesion-carriers does not need any special analysis, I will concentrate on examples of cohesion carriers belonging to groups

(ii) and (iii). As to group (ii), in Ch. VI of AAW we find, among others, the following chains of co-referential units: ‘a

footman’—‘the Fish-Footman’, ‘another footman’—‘the Frog-Footman’—‘the Footman’; ‘a baby’—‘her child’—‘the poor

little thing’—‘this child’—‘the little thing’—‘the thing’—‘this creature’ —‘the little creature’. These chains of course have to

be complemented by the pronouns which are co-referent with the elements of the chains; I have left these out of consideration

here for the sake of simplicity. What is to be mentioned here, however, is that the co-referential pronominal chains can be of

different complexity. In a descriptive text the co-referential pronominal chains generally consist of pronouns of the third

person; in a dialogue text a ‘you’ and an ‘I’ can also be co-referential if they occur in different speech-contributions. Since

Alice often talks to herself and the narrator also comments on her soliloquies, we find in AAW co-referential chains

concerning Alice in which a pronoun occurs in all the three persons as e.g. in Ch. II (Carroll 1982:17): ‘“You ought to be

ashamed of yourself,” said Alice, “a great girl like you,” (she might well say this), “to go on crying in this way! Stop this

moment, I tell you!” But she went on…’ (the italics are mine). As far as (iii) is concerned, the following example may be

mentioned: in Ch. III of AAW the characters are different living creatures. The text classifies them as ‘birds’ and ‘animals’

and the names of these living creatures are used as quasi-Christian names: Lory, Duck, Dodo, Eaglet, Magpie and Canary as birds,

while Mouse, Crab (and Dinah—Alice’s cat) are animals. Also mice, frogs, worms and oysters are mentioned, but are used as

common nouns.

When compositional cohesion is being investigated, the main questions are the following: (i) what is to be considered as the

basic unit of the compositional sense-semantic organisation? and (ii) how are the higher-grade composition-units constructed

from these basic units?

To the first question it is expedient to provide a deep-structure-specific and a surface-structure-specific answer. In the deep

structure the basic unit is the so-called elementary proposition (cf. the examples of propositions discussed previously); in the

surface structure the basic units are the text units declared by the author himself as text sentences (and indicated by a full stop,

an exclamation mark or a question mark)—to be called further on ‘first-grade composition-units’. It should be mentioned that

paragraphs, subchapters and chapters are (formal) composition units belonging to the formatio; they may—but they do not

necessarily—coincide with sense-semantic composition-units.

A proposition net which contains all those propositions, an argument or the predicate of which is identical, can be called a

deep-structure-specific (higher-grade) cohesional composition-unit. AAW may, for example, be assigned nets which contain

the propositions concerning the Rabbit, the Rabbit-hole, Alice, Dinah, etc.

In investigating the compositional cohesion of the surface structure, we have to examine the compositional organisation of

both the first-grade and the higher-grade composition-units. For the analysis of some aspects of compositional cohesion let us

consider the paragraphs 2–4 in Ch. XI of AAW (Carroll 1982:96):

2. Alice had never been in a court of justice before, but she had read about them in books, and she was quite pleased to

find that she knew the name of nearly everything there. ‘That’s the judge,’ she said to herself, ‘because of his great

wig.’

3. The judge, by the way, was the King; and, as he wore his crown over the wig (look at the frontispiece if you want

to see how he did it), he did not look at all comfortable, and it was certainly not becoming.

4. ‘And that’s the jury-box,’ thought Alice; ‘and those twelve creatures,’ (she was obliged to say ‘creatures,’ you see,

because some of them were animals, and some were birds,) ‘I suppose they are the jurors.’ She said this last word two

or three times over to herself, being rather proud of it: for she thought, and rightly too, that very few little girls of her

age knew the meaning of it at all. However, ‘jurymen’ would have done just as well.



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Let us call the independent sense-semantic basic-units of the first-grade composition-units ‘communicates’. The first firstgrade composition-unit of the fourth paragraph can be broken down into communicates as follows: ‘And /1/ that’s the jurybox,’ /2/ thought Alice; ‘and /3a/ those twelve creatures,’ (/4.1*/ she was obliged /4.1/ to say ‘creatures,’ /4.2/ you see,

because /4.3/ some of them were animals, and /4.4/ some were birds,) ′/3*/ I suppose /3b/ they are the jurors.’ This first-grade

composition-unit contains 9 communicates (/1/, /2/, /3*/, /3a+3b/, /4.1*/, /4.1/, /4.2/, /4.3/, /4.4/). From among these

communicates five are connected by brackets to form a constituent of this composition unit, thus the remaining four

communicates form another constituent. /4.3/ and /4.4/ are connected by and; /4.1/ is dominated by 4.1*/, and the two form

together the syntactic unit [/4.1*/::/4.1/] (where '::' stands for syntactic embedding); [/4.1*/::/4.1/] and [/4.3/ and /4.4/] are

connected by because; /3*/ is the comment of Alice on /3a+3b/ (cf. the use of ‘I’ and of the quotation marks); /4.2/ connects

[[/4.1*/::/4.1/] because [/4.3/ and /4.4/]] to /3a/ metalinguistically-deictically; [/3*/+/3a+3b/] is connected to /1/ by and; /2/ is

the communicative comment of the narrator on [/1/ and [/3′/+/3a+3b/]]; in addition, cf. the co-reference of ‘Alice’ and ‘she’ in /

2/ and /4.1*/, respectively.

The ‘And’ introducing the fourth paragraph connects the above analysed first-grade composition-unit of this paragraph with

the last first-grade composition-unit (‘“That’s the judge,”…’) of the second paragraph; in this latter first-grade compositionunit in the first communicate ‘the judge’ is the comment part which will be converted into the topic part by the first

communicate of the third paragraph (‘The judge, by the way,…’); ‘that’, ‘that’ and ‘those’ are deictic expressions, the extratextual context to which they refer is described in the first paragraph of Ch. XI. Chapter XI forms a thematic unit, which is a

trial in the court of justice. The events taking place there have a special local and temporal scheme, The investigation of the

compositional cohesion between the chapters of AAW can be carried out analogously to the way in which it was done in the

case involving the communicates, first-grade composition units and chains of first-grade composition-units (paragraphs,

chains of paragraphs) etc.

A longer text-part or a text can also be assigned a so-called ‘abstract’ which provides a summing up of this text-part/text.

These abstracts are also called ‘macro-structures’ in the literature. Since making an abstract always involves some

idiosyncratic point of view, one and the same text-part/text can be assigned more than one different abstract/macro-structure.

The example treated in this section shows almost all relevant manifestations of compositional cohesion: communicational

cohesion, thematic cohesion, conjunctional cohesion, co-referential cohesion and cohesion by topicalisation. Two remarks

appear to be appropriate here: (i) many of the schemata underlying the thematic organisation (and their recognition) are socioculturally determined; their typical manifestations are called story scheme (story grammar), expository scheme, etc; (ii) in the

analysis and description of the semantic function of the conjunctions, the relevance-relations between the states of affairs (the

verbal description of which is connected (or can be connected) by the particular conjunctions) do, in fact, play important

roles. To discover and classify these relevance-relations with respect to conjuctions such as ‘but’ or ‘because’, is as important

as it is with respect to ‘and’ and to the colon or the semicolon which are capable of fulfilling the function of all conjunctions.

To conclude this section, I want to make a remark on the completeness of the (language-specific) sense-semantic

compositional-organisation. There are different ways for a text to indicate that the (sense-semantic) composition is

accomplished: the end of a theoretical proving can be referred to by the conclusion sign QED (=quod erat demonstrandum

[=which was to be demonstrated]); or—as it is the case in AAW—the expression ‘THE END’ can appear at the end of the last

chapter of a text. However, judging whether the sense-semantic composition is really complete is only possible by also

analysing/interpreting the state-of-affairs configuration expressed in the text.

2.3.2

Sensus; the relatum-specific sense-semantic organisation of the vehiculum

To discover the relatum-specific sense-semantic organisation of the vehiculum means to discover that world-fragment which,

according to the assumption of the interpreter, finds an expression in the text. The main questions concerning this worldfragment are the following: (i) is this world-fragment a fictive one or a non-fictive one, and if it is fictive, in what way; (ii) of

what subworlds does this world-fragment consist; what is the relational organisation of the individual subworlds and the

whole world-fragment like; what inferences can be assigned to the individual subworlds and to the whole world-fragment;

(iii) what is the vehiculum-specific configurational arrangement of the verbal manifestation of the objects/events of this worldfragment like? Let us clarify these questions by examples taken again from Carroll (1982).

(i) The world of AAW is a fictive world embedded into the real world or, more exactly, a fictive world created by a created

dream. We also find explicit hints in AAW of the fact that we are faced with a (created) dream: in the Prefatory Poem and in

the last two paragraphs preceding the concluding part of Ch. XII. This fictive world is fictive in that its organisation partly

conforms to and partly does not conform to the regularities according to which the world we consider as the real world is

organised.

(ii) Within a world-fragment we can demarcate subworlds in different ways; we may consider some places (and/or times)

world-constitutive but we may also consider individual characters as being world-constitutive. Thus in AAW we can refer to



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the world of the Rabbit, the Duchess, the March Hare, the Hatter and the Dormouse, as well as to the world of the King and of

the Queen, etc., as subworlds. In these subworlds there are animals which can speak (and which are dressed and behave like

human beings), as well as figures of playing cards acting like human beings. The relational organisation of the individual

subworlds can be represented, for example, by constructing sets/nets of those propositions, the arguments of which are names

(definite descriptions) of the persons constituting the respective subworld. These subworlds are connected with one another in

various ways; Alice gets in touch with all of them, while also preserving the memory of her own world. The local dimensions

of these subworlds are different from the real world, and Alice, when contacting them, is capable of changing her own size by

different means (in general by eating and/or drinking something). The asterisk configurations as elements of the composition

always indicate such a change. Through her person and through the events taking place with her or around her one can well

illustrate the problem which is, under the influence of certain philosophical logics, called the problem of trans-world identity.

An example of the problem of transworld identity in a normal context is the connection between the physically existing

person of a friend of ours, his person reconstructed in our imagination, and his person appearing in our dream, etc. Alice often

expresses that she is aware of the problems concerning her identity: in Ch. II (Carroll 1982:18) she reflects:

Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if

I’m not the same, the next question is “Who in the world am I?” Ah, that’s the great puzzle!’ And she began thinking

over all the children she knew that were of the same age as herself, to see if she could have been changed for any of

them.

in Ch. V she answers the questions of the Caterpillar concerning who she is, as follows (Carroll 1982:41):

Alice replied, rather shyly, ‘I—I hardly know, Sir, just at present—at least I know who I was when I got up this

morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ said the Caterpillar, sternly. ‘Explain yourself!’

‘I ca’n’t explain myself, I’m afraid, Sir,’ said Alice, ‘because I’m not myself, you see.’

and these answers are followed by some dialogue-parts of similar character.

We can, in addition, also speak of subworlds within the individual subworlds, if we consider, for example, those states of

affairs as individual (sub-) subworlds which are experienced by a subworld-constitutive person, i.e. those which he knows,

believes, imagines, etc. (These (sub-)subworld-constitutive expressions—somebody experiences, knows, believes, etc.,—are

called ‘propositional attitudes’ in the literature.) In the individual subworlds the inferences are also different. The constitutiverules of a subworld generate inferences of their own and/or they fulfil the role of a filter, i.e. they select from among the realworld-specific inferences the subworld-specific ones. For example in the real world the expression ‘something appears’ can

be assigned completely different inferences from the examples seen in certain subworlds in AAW; the Cheshire Cat can, for

example, appear and disappear in parts. In AAW Ch. VIII, we can read the following about this (Carroll 1982: 75):

‘How are you getting on?’ said the Cat, as soon as there was mouth enough for it to speak with.

Alice waited till the eyes appeared, and then nodded. ‘It’s no use speaking to it,’ she thought, ‘till its ears have come,

or at least one of them.’ In another minute the whole head appeared, and then Alice put down her flamingo, and began

an account of the game, feeling very glad she had some one to listen to her. The Cat seemed to think that there was

enough of it now in sight, and no more of it appeared.

(Cf. also the concluding part of this chapter.)

(iii) When the system of the subworlds (and (sub-)subworlds) of the world fragment assignable to a text are being

established, the surface structure of the text can also be investigated from the point of view of how the events of the individual

subworlds alternate in it. While Alice, for instance, (in her altered size) actively takes part in some events of some subworld,

she sometimes also dwells in thought in her own real world.

The aspects of the relatum-specific sense-semantic organisation treated earlier are (relationally, inferentially,

configurationally) analogous to the aspects of the sensus called the ‘conceptual verbal-sensus’ of the language-specific sensesemantic organisation. In addition, we can also find the analogue (analogues) of the conceptual non-verbal sensus. An explicit

example of this, in the concluding part of Ch. XII of AAW (Carroll; 1982:110) is:

and still as she listened, or seemed to listen, the whole place around her became alive with the strange creatures of her

little sister’s dream.



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The long grass rustled at her feet as the White Rabbit hurried by—the frightened Mouse splashed his way through the

neighbouring pool—she could hear the rattle of the tea-cups as the March Hare and his friends shared their neverending meal,

The question of whether the non-conceptual sensus also has an analogue in the relatum-specific sense-semantic organisation

cannot be investigated here.

The relatum-specific relational sensus is also called the ‘discourse world’ in the literature. The connectedness and

completeness of a discourse world (or discourse subworld) is guaranteed by those relations existing among its states-of-affairs

which are considered as relevant by the interpreter. Concerning the relatum-specific configurational sensus we can speak

about cohesion and completeness in the same way as we do concerning the language-specific configurational sensus.

2.4

Relatum: what a text is about

Concerning the (re) constructed relatum-specifically organised sensus two further questions arise: (i) is the text only about the

thing the interpreter believes manifests itself in the text according to this sensus, or is it (also) about something else?; (ii) is

the thing the interpreter believes that the text is about compatible with his knowledge concerning the world, and does it meet

his expectations concerning verbal communication? Let us investigate these questions with reference to Carroll’s texts.

(i) The opinion of the reader about AAW may be that it is nothing but the description of a fictive dream; however, he also

may be of another opinion. If he thinks that it is a description of a fictive dream, then it is this fictive dream which for him is

what AAW is about, which is the extra-textural relatum of AAW. If, however, the interpreter thinks that AAW is (also) about

another thing, he has to (re)construct this other thing. (It is well-known that AAW can also be interpreted as a caricature of the

Victorian epoch in England.) When this other thing is being (re)constructed, the dominating operation is the symbolic

reinterpretation of the language specific sensus and of the relatum-specific sensus implied by it in order to construct the

mental image of a new (extra-textual) relatum. In this symbolic reinterpretation the referents of the expression ‘the King and

the Queen of Hearts’ will not be picture-card figures capable of acting like human beings, but they will be Prince Albert and

Queen Victoria, and Ch. XI will not be the description of a trial in a court of justice in a dream, but it will be a caricature of

English jurisdiction of that epoch, etc. Symbolic (re)interpretation has two conditions: on one hand we must know how the

mechanism operates which controls the symbolic (re)interpretation, on the other hand we have to be in the position to estimate

adequately the measure and consistency of the symbolisation we may expect from a text-producer when creating a symbolic

text. A symbolic text is, after all, not a message in cipher of which all elements must (and can) be translated into another

language.

(ii) When judging whether the relatum assigned to AAW is compatible with the knowledge of the interpreter about the

world and whether it meets his expectations concerning the assumed communication-situation or not, the interpreter proceeds

one way if he considers AAW as the description of a fictive dream in the form of a book for children, and another way if he

considers it as a caricature of England in the Victorian epoch. In the first case the question of compatibility arises in the form

of whether the events described in AAW are accessible to the fantasy of a child or not, while the expectation concerns the

connectedness of the events described in the individual chapters and of the chain of these events in the whole of AAW, and

whether these events or chains of events can be considered as in some way complete or closed. (Of course, the expectation

also comprises the intelligibility of the language puns and the intelligibility of at least one part of the intertextual references.)

In the second case AAW will be compatible with the knowledge of the interpreter about the world, if he himself thinks that

the caricature corresponds to the state of that epoch, or he can at least imagine that some people might think that it does. The

expectation of the interpreter concerns the events to which the texts of the individual chapter symbolically refer, and it also

concerns whether the chain of the events as presented in the whole of AAW can be considered as in some way complete and

closed. (Of course, in this case the expectation also comprises the question of whether the language puns and the intertextual

references fulfil an appropriate function in the mental image of the extra-textual relatum, (re)constructed by symbolic

interpretation.)

In order to form a judgement about the connectedness and completeness of state-of-affairs configurations we only have

intersubjective knowledge about those configurations which are institutionalised in some socio-cultural context. Such

configurations are, for instance, a cricket-match, a tea-party, a legal trial, etc. Other configurations and the knowledge applied

when compatibility is being judged are, in general, idiosyncratic.

Recent literature provides the following, more or less generally accepted, conception of text coherence: Speaking about

text coherence we refer to (the mental image of) an extra-linguistic relatum. If the interpreter is capable of assigning a sensus

to the text to be interpreted which enables him to (re)construct the mental image of a connected and complete state-ofaffairs configuration, this text qualifies for him, with reference to this mental image, as coherent. Since the significans of a text

almost never contains the description of all those events the knowledge of which is inevitably necessary for constructing the



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(connected and complete) mental image mentioned here, the inferences leading to the missing events play a relevant role in

the (re-) construction of both the sensus and the mental image of the extra-linguistic relatum.

3.

TEXT PROCESSING—TEXTOLOGICAL RESEARCH.

In the second section the most relevant constituents of text construction were discussed. When I used expressions like ‘the

interpreter is doing now this and now that’, I did it for the sake of comprehension; the second section does not provide the

description of either a structural or a procedural interpretation process. In the present section I will first briefly treat some

aspects of text processing, primarily of the various types of interpretation, then I will outline the main aspects of textological

research.

3.1

Some aspects of text processing

The term text processing is used to indicate all operations carried out upon texts and with texts, from the compilation of an

automatic index to translation by means of computer or to the computerised simulation of human text understanding. The

interpretation processes form the central subset of text processes. The possible objects and types of interpretation are

represented by Figure 9.

In the interpretation processes one usually investigates what are called the ‘system-specific (system-immanent) construction

of a text’ and the ‘functional settings of a text’. By the investigation of the system-specific (system-immanent) construction of

a text we understand the investigation of the text constituents discussed in the second section and the relations existing

between them by means of explicitly-formulated rules and knowledge- and belief-systems; the investigation may only reach

as far as the explicitly-represented systems permit. When investigating the functional settings of a text, we are concerned with

the following questions: what was the motivation of the text-producer for producing the text to be investigated?; what are the

characteristics (what is the process) of production of the text in question?; what are the characteristics (what is the process) of

reception of the text in question?; what kind of effect does (might) the text in question have on which receivers and under

which circumstances?

Both the system-specific construction and the functional settings (or any aspect/factor of them) can be investigated as a

static or as a dynamic entity. In the first case we may speak about structural interpretation, in the second case about

procedural interpretation. It should be emphasised again that in my conception a structure (that is a constructum) is intended

to be an approximation of the assumed inherent static organisation, while a procedure (that is again a constructum) is intended

to be an approximation of the assumed inherent dynamic organisation of the object to be interpreted.

We may differentiate further on between explicative and evaluative, descriptive and argumentative, natural and theoretical

interpretation. The aim of the explicative interpretation is to produce a structure and/or procedure; the evaluative interpretation

evaluates a produced structure and/or procedure from a historical, aesthetic, ideological, moral, etc. point of view. The aim of

the descriptive interpretation is the description of a produced structure and/ or procedure or the description of the evaluation

of a produced structure and/or procedure; the argumentative interpretation presents arguments for the validity of these

descriptions. We speak about natural interpretation when an average reader/hearer performs the interpretative operations in a

normal communication situation; we speak about theoretical interpretation when a theoretically trained interpreter performs

the interpretative operations according to the requirements of a theory. Let us comment on some types of interpretations.

When interpreting the system-specific construction, (i) the descriptive explicative structural-interpretation (as a product) is a

static net of the elements taking part in the organisation of the interpreted object (i.e. a net which does not contain any

information about the way it came into being); (ii) the descriptive explicative procedural-interpretation (as a product) is a

dynamic net of the elements taking part in the organisation of the interpreted object (i.e. a net which also contains information

about the way it came into being).

The decision of which elements to consider when constructing these nets depends solely on the system-immanent set of

knowledge and/or beliefs and the rule system of the theoretical apparatus chosen as the device of the interpretations; no

psychological/perceptional or other kind of production- and/ or reception-specific viewpoints play a role here. In general, the

interpretation of the system-specific construction does not supply a full interpretation of the construction and, even if it were

capable of doing so, this interpretation could not be adequate because of the disregarded aspects of the functional setting.

When interpreting the functional settings, (i) the descriptive explicative structural-interpretation (as a product) is an

interpretation representing the result of an accomplished interpretation-process; it does not contain any reference to the way

the process has been carried out; (ii) the descriptive explicative procedural-interpretation (as a product) is an interpretation

representing the process of the interpretation carried out; it does contain information about the way this process has been

carried out.