A minor issue?

2009 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dulcie M. Engel
Keyword(s):  
Essential Elements ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Sentence Structure ◽  
Written Discourse ◽  
Spoken Discourse ◽  
Communicative Functions ◽  
Subject Noun ◽  
French Grammar ◽  
The Many ◽  
A Minor

‘Minor sentences’ is one of the many terms used in the literature to refer to a phenomenon usually relegated to an obscure paragraph of the grammar book, or treated principally as a spoken discourse feature. These forms are also referred to as sentence fragments, incomplete sentences, verbless sentences, and nominal sentences, to name but a few of the terms found. Despite the marginal status attributed to the forms, more detailed study is warranted. Minor sentences occur frequently in the written language, and perform important communicative functions in a range of contexts. The term is used to refer to apparently complete phrases which do not conform to canonical sentence structure. Typically, they lack a subject noun phrase, or a finite verb, i.e. one of the two ‘essential’ elements of the sentence. In this paper, we begin with an overview of English and French grammar book and discourse analysis approaches. We then discuss previous studies of minor sentence contexts, French recipes and newspaper headlines, before turning to a corpus consisting of public signs and notices, headlines, advertising slogans, and crossword clues, in an effort to determine whether certain minor sentence types can be associated with particular (written) discourse functions.

scholarly journals Rječnička raznolikost pisanih tekstova osoba s razvojnim jezičnim poremećajem

2020 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 14-30
Author(s):  
Gordana Hržica ◽  
Sara Košutar ◽  
Mateja Kramarić
Keyword(s):  
Language Production ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
Moving Average ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Written Discourse ◽  
Lexical Diversity ◽  
Written Narratives ◽  
Spoken Discourse ◽  
Age Range

Developmental language disorder (DLD) is one of the most common language disorders in preschool and school age, and it also persists later in life. Children with DLD show a range of expressive and/or receptive difficulties in language, including vocabulary acquisition. The goal of this research was to explore the differences between persons with developmental language disorder and persons with typical language development (TLD) in lexical diversity. Earlier research focused on spoken discourse of younger speakers. In the present research, written discourse of speakers covering a broad age range was explored. Twenty participants with DLD and 19 with TLD were selected from the Croatian Corpus of Non-professional Written Language (Kuvač Kraljević, Hržica and Kologranić Belić, in press). They produced narrative language samples based on the Expression, Reception and Recall of Narrative Instrument (ERRNI; Bishop, 2004). To measure lexical diversity, four measures were calculated: the number of different words (NDW) and type-token ratio (TTR) on a restricted number of words, the moving average type-token ration (MATTR) and lexical diversity D on full-length samples. The independent samples t-test was used to compare the two groups. Participants with DLD had significantly lower results on all four measures. This leads to the conclusion that all four measures can differentiate groups of participants with different language status. Persons with DLD showed difficulties in using vocabulary when producing written narratives, which is a demanding language production task.

Prescription and practice

2003 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colleen Cotter
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Semantic Meaning ◽  
Written Discourse ◽  
Spoken Discourse ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Communicative Functions ◽  
Frequency Of Use ◽  
Using Data

The use of sentence-initial connectives (and, but) in written discourse historically has been disfavored, including by newspaper copy editors who delete them. This article describes changes in the frequency and use of sentence-initial connectives in news stories over the course of the twentieth century, from their relative absence to a semi-conventionalized frequency of use. Connectives have both referential (or semantic) meaning and functional (or pragmatic) meaning, the latter especially associated with spoken discourse. Using data from one community, I show how connectives in sentence-initial position have come to be used by reporters to meet profession-specific communicative functions that override other prescriptive considerations. These functions are mostly pragmatic, rather than semantic, and include goals that are both interactional (managing the interlocutorial distance between reporter and reader, by invoking spoken discourse norms) and structural (delimiting text categories or genres of journalism, and creating coherence in news narratives).

Three Essential Elements to Demystify Prejudice and Promote Literacy in Mental Health

2022 ◽  
pp. 167-186
Author(s):  
Isabel Maria Abreu Rodrigues Fragoeiro
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Nursing Care ◽  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Mental Healthcare ◽  
Essential Elements ◽  
Autonomous Region ◽  
Health And Illness ◽  
Adaptive Processes ◽  
The Many ◽  
The University

The text is based on the scientific research carried out by the author during the many years that she has tried to follow the evolution of mental health at an international level, in Portugal and in the Autonomous Region of Madeira. It is based on the knowledge deepened through critical reflection carried out throughout the training and professional processes in which it has participated. The performance as a professor at the University of Madeira-Health Higher School, the real experience as a provider of specialized nursing care in mental and psychiatric health to population groups living in different communities, the various intervention contexts in which mental healthcare is available, the different circumstances of health and illness observed in people who experience transactional and adaptive processes at various stages of the life cycle are real contributions that have been constituted as a source of essential material for a critical and constructive look at one of the great challenges that health and mental health services and their professionals face in today's societies.

The toll of disruptions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peggy D. Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Disciplinary Action ◽  
Peace Of Mind ◽  
Daily Experiences ◽  
Discipline Problem ◽  
Look Back ◽  
Fast Pace ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
The Many ◽  
A Minor ◽  
The Impact

“This job is driving me crazy . . . literally!” Spoken by a frenzied educator, these words testify to the many disruptions that hap­pen in schools. The fast pace of our myriad daily experiences can cause our thoughts to disconnect, our minds to overload, our brains to feel like they are on the verge of explosion. We remember the time a fight broke out in class and we had to stop it. We remember the time the principal punished our stu­dent (without our knowledge) for a minor infraction. We remem­ber the time a child vomited on our new shoes and we had to wear them the remainder of the day. These are the standout episodes. The disruptions are certainly memorable, and they can make for good- natured storytelling. According to Jones, however, the toll of these big moments of disruption pales in comparison to the smaller ones. Both com­mon and constant, small disruptions erode our patience and rob our peace of mind. Like the constant drip of a faucet or hum of a motor, it is the underlying persistence of sound and motion that can zap our energy and compromise our endurance. Are we aware of or immune to the low levels of noise and disarray in our classes? Are our students? While perhaps not warranting punishment or disciplinary action, small disruptions may be subliminal, but they are powerful. For the vitality of our students and ourselves, noting the impact of small interruptions may be worth a look, a listen, and a resolution. The most persistent misconception about discipline is that the most important problems in discipline management are the biggest problems, the crises. Certainly they are the most memorable. When teachers look back over the year, they will certainly remember the time the fight broke out or the time a student told them to do an unnatural act . . . . The most important and costly type of discipline problem in any classroom is the small disruption . . . . Ironically, therefore, the most important discipline problem in the classroom is the small disruption, not the crisis. It is the small disruption by its very frequency that destroys the teacher’s patience by degrees and destroys learning by the minute.

scholarly journals Effect on airway caliber of stimulation of the hypothalamic locomotor region

1998 ◽  
Vol 84 (4) ◽  
pp. 1388-1394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian A. Beyaert ◽  
Janeen M. Hill ◽  
Brock K. Lewis ◽  
Marc P. Kaufman
Keyword(s):  
Minor Role ◽  
Fictive Locomotion ◽  
Central Command ◽  
Airway Constriction ◽  
Airway Caliber ◽  
Chemical Stimuli ◽  
The Many ◽  
A Minor ◽  
Response To Exercise ◽  
Stimulation Of

Airway dilation is one of the many autonomic responses to exercise. Two neural mechanisms are believed to evoke these responses: central command and the muscle reflex. Previously, we found that activation of central command, evoked by electrical and chemical stimulation of the mesencephalic locomotor region, constricted the airways rather than dilated them. In the present study we examined in decerebrate paralyzed cats the role played by the hypothalamic locomotor region, the activation of which also evokes central command, in causing the airway dilator response to exercise. We found that activation of the hypothalamic locomotor region by electrical and chemical stimuli evoked fictive locomotion and, for the most part, airway constriction. Fictive locomotion also occurred spontaneously, and this too, for the most part, was accompanied by airway constriction. We conclude that central command plays a minor role in the airway dilator response to exercise.

scholarly journals Creating a small corpus to inform materials design in an ongoing English for Specialist Purposes (ESP) course for Orthodontists and Orthodontic Assistants

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Jones
Keyword(s):  
Search Engine ◽  
Materials Design ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Written Discourse ◽  
Spoken Discourse ◽  
Teacher Researcher ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Adjectival Modification

In order to inform materials design for an ESP course for orthodontists and orthodontic assistants, the teacher-researcher assembled a small corpus of practitioner-to-patient written texts by using a search engine and copying websites using ICEWeb software (Weisser 2014-2016), cleaning the text manually and then analyzing the text with AntConc software (Anthony, 2014).Findings include a balance between nominal and adjectival modification, tendency toward attributive processes in first and second person while third-person singular verbs have attributive and also material and mental processes. In addition, collocations of ‘bite’, ‘teeth’ and ‘braces’ are detailed.Throughout the article, the role of corpus compiler-as-researcher (Koester, 2010) is discussed as an advantage in understanding the corpus by locating findings within a deeper contextual use. Limitations are discussed regarding software use, cleaning and use of written discourse to inform spoken discourse.

scholarly journals Grammar, gender and demonstratives in lateralized imagery for sentences

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikkel Wallentin ◽  
Roberta Rocca ◽  
Sofia Stroustrup
Keyword(s):  
Gender Stereotypes ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Gender Effects ◽  
Sentence Structure ◽  
Grammatical Subject ◽  
Gender Biases ◽  
Reading Direction ◽  
Figure Drawings ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Significant Support

We investigated biases in the organization of imagery by asking participants to make stick-figure drawings of sentences containing a man, a woman and a transitive action (e.g. She kisses that guy). Previous findings show that prominent features of meaning and sentence structure are placed to the left in drawings, according to reading direction (e.g. Stroustrup & Wallentin, 2018). Five hundred thirty participants listened to sentences in Danish and made 8 drawings each. We replicated three findings: 1) that the first mentioned element is placed to the left more often, 2) that the agent in the sentence is placed to the left, and 3) that the grammatical subject is placed to the left of the object. We further tested hypotheses related to deixis and gender stereotypes. By adding demonstratives (e.g. Danish equivalents of this and that), that have been found to indicate attentional prominence, we tested the hypothesis that this is also translated into a left-ward bias in the produced drawings. We were unable to find support for this hypothesis. Analyses of gender biases tested the presence of a gender identification and a gender stereotype effect. According to the identification hypothesis, participants should attribute prominence to their own gender and draw it to the left, and according to the stereotype effect participants should be more prone to draw the male character to the left, regardless of own gender. We were not able to find significant support for either of the two gender effects. The combination of replications and null-findings suggest that the left-ward bias in the drawing experiment might be narrowly tied to left-to-right distribution in written language and less to overall prominence. No effect of handedness was observed.

scholarly journals HEDGES USED BY INDONESIAN ELT STUDENTS IN WRITTEN AND SPOKEN DISCOURSES

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 650
Author(s):  
Asfina Rida ◽  
A. Effendi Kadarisman ◽  
Utari Praba Astuti
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
State University ◽  
Research Subjects ◽  
Written Discourse ◽  
Spoken Discourse ◽  
Study Section ◽  
Considerable Research ◽  
Degree Of Confidence ◽  
Descriptive Qualitative

Hedging expression is considered an important interactional metadiscourse device which shows the writer’s/speaker’s degree of confidence in the truth of a proposition and his/her attitude to the readers or listeners in academic discourse. Although considerable research on hedges has been undertaken, there have been virtually no studies on hedges in spoken discourse in educational contexts. To fill this gap, this study aims at describing and comparing the use of hedges by Indonesian ELT students in written and spoken discourses. This study is descriptive qualitative in nature. The research subjects were 20 ELT graduate students registered in 2015 at a state university in East Java, Indonesia. The sources of data were the students’ thesis proposals and thesis proposal presentations, particularly the ‘background of the study’ section. As such, the study used a corpus-based approach which utilized concordance software, i.e. AntConc (3.4.4), to examine the frequency of hedges based on types. The use of hedges was categorized on the basis of hedges taxonomy adapted from Salager-Meyer (1994) and Hyland (2005). The findings of this study revealed that (i) in terms of types and frequency, the patterns of the use of hedges types (from the most to the least frequently used) by ELT students in both corpora were almost similar: WD: S–Ap–Em–Ex–Ch, and SD: S–Ap–Ex–Em–Ch (see Table 2 for legends); (ii) ELT students employed more hedges in written discourse than in spoken discourse; and (iii) approximately 65% of hedges variants provided in the taxonomy were employed by ELT students in written and spoken discourses. On the basis of the results of the study, the discourse mode (written or spoken) can be a factor that affects the use of hedges in academic discourse.

scholarly journals Clause and predicative constituents in an Austronesian language: Lampung language

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 62-79
Author(s):  
Afrianto ◽  
Eva Tuckyta Sari Sujatna ◽  
Nani Darmayanti ◽  
Farida Ariyani ◽  
Jessamine Cooke-Plagwitz
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Sentence Structure ◽  
Austronesian Language ◽  
Nominal Phrase ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Subject ◽  
A Minor ◽  
Dependent Clause

AbstractThis research is conducted qualitatively and aimed at patterning and describing clause and sentence structure in Lampung language through the configuration of its constituents. Regarding the constituents, Lampung has two types of clause: minor and major clauses. A minor clause is indicated by only one constituent, which is commonly a subject, predicate or adjunct. Regarding its function, it can be classified as vocative, shown by exclamation (Wuy!, Huy!); a greeting, as shown by an expression (tabikpun ngalam pukha); and an Arabic greeting (assalamualaikum). On the other hand, a major clause minimally consists of a subject and predicate, and apart from these there can also be an object, complement and adverbial. Furthermore, this research finds various categories that can act as predicative constituents: they are a verb/verbal phrase, adjective/adjective phrase, and noun/nominal phrase. Additionally, a copular verb (iyulah) and existential marker (wat) can also be the predicate. This research also reveals that in a sentence two or more clauses are connected by a conjunction, and then this conjunction becomes an indicator of dependent clauses. Also, a dependent clause can be found after the subject or the object of the independent clause.

scholarly journals Vernacular style writing

Pragmatics ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 583-608 ◽  
Author(s):  
Satoko Suzuki
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Formation Process ◽  
Structural Characteristics ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Written Discourse ◽  
Spoken Discourse ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
Creativity And Innovation ◽  
Final Particles

This paper shows that some Japanese non-fiction writers are using various structural characteristics of spoken discourse in their writing. Their written discourse includes non-canonical word order and long sentences that are produced by combining a series of clauses. Their sentences may lack case or topic marking particles, but they may contain clause-final particles. Their discourse looks like it may have gone through a dynamic, on-going formation process because it includes reformulation and changes in the structure in midstream. It is proposed that writers who adopt such an approach are deliberately blurring the boundary between speech and writing for multiple reasons. They may be exhibiting their creativity and innovation as well as their anti-establishment ideology. Vernacular style writing may also be an attempt to engage, involve, and connect with their readers. Further, they may be reflecting as well as expressing contemporary society in which orality is viewed favorably and as a result, writing in general has become increasingly more casual than before. The phenomenon discussed in this paper may be viewed as a reflection of erosions and shifting of traditional genres.

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