Chapter 9. Child writing and discourse organization

The present study aims to investigate the use of discourse markers (DMs) in non-native (Croatian) EFL teachers´ talk with primary and secondary school students. The study concentrates on the occurrences and frequencies of DMs, but it also provides an account of the function distribution of the three most frequently used DMs (ok, so, and). The quantitative and qualitative analyses of the recorded transcriptions reveal that the teachers use a variety of DMs, almost exclusively the ones typical of classroom management and classroom discourse organization, with no significant differences in the patterns of DM use with the primary and secondary school students. The DMs fulfill a number of structural and interpersonal functions mainly aimed at providing coherent and stimulating classroom discourse. The findings of this study might contribute to raising awareness of the diversified functions of DMs, which could facilitate non-native EFL teachers´ overall lesson organization and structuring of particular teaching segments.

Download Full-text

Creating versatility in Thai demonstratives

Studies in Language ◽

10.1075/sl.20083.iwa ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Shoichi Iwasaki ◽

Parada Dechapratumwan

Keyword(s):

Detailed Analysis ◽

Joint Attention ◽

Basic Function ◽

Multiple Functions ◽

Position Analysis ◽

Discourse Organization

Abstract Beyond their basic function to index exophoric and endophoric referents, Thai demonstratives have a host of pragmatic functions to encode concerns regarding discourse organization, subjectivity, and intersubjectivity. Based on a detailed analysis of demonstratives used in conversation, we attempt to uncover the pattern of grammaticalization for this class of words in Thai, and to propose a mechanism that allows them to develop multiple functions. Since demonstratives are indexical signs and are qualitatively distinct from content words, we must view the grammaticalization process of demonstratives differently from that of content words. In this paper, we use the model of the joint attention triangle based on Diessel’s earlier work and the functional utterance frame based on the “attractor position” analysis for grammaticalization of nouns and verbs advanced by Bisang (1996) to analyze how exactly demonstratives come to acquire pragmatic functions.

Download Full-text

The Haredi Scholar-Society and the Military Draft in Israel

Research Anthology on Religious Impacts on Society ◽

10.4018/978-1-7998-3435-9.ch032 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 626-637

Author(s):

Nissim Leon

Keyword(s):

Mirror Image ◽

The State ◽

Considerable Extent ◽

Critical View ◽

National Ideology ◽

Discourse Organization ◽

Military Draft ◽

The Military ◽

State Of Israel ◽

Cultural Structure

This chapter examines the phenomenon of deferments of army enlistment in Israel of haredi (ultra-Orthodox) men studying in yeshivas. The author claims that counter-nationalist argument enables us to understand the progress that the haredi scholar-society has made from a sectorial entity that kept itself removed from the nation-state, and viewed the state as an undesired political fact, to an entity that maintains its own counter-nationalism. This social cultural religious entity regards itself as a symbiotic or active partner in the national endeavor, specifically through the insular haredi ethos. The author employs the term counter-nationalism to describe an approach that takes a critical view of nationalism, but has in effect adapted it to the structure of the discourse, organization, and aims of the hegemonic national ideology. This perspective raises the possibility that the ultra-Orthodox are beginning to view themselves as maintaining a complementary partnership with the Israeli culture, and to a considerable extent have even constructed a similar cultural structure, a sort of mirror-image of the militaristic one. Moreover, this study even suggests that the haredi mainstream seeks recognition for itself as the spiritual elite troops of the State of Israel.

Download Full-text

Connecteurs et mouvements rythmiques (Catulle, c. 64)

Journal of Latin Linguistics ◽

10.1515/joll.2005.9.2.885 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 9 (2) ◽

Author(s):

Emmanuel Plantade

Keyword(s):

Functional Grammar ◽

Discourse Organization

SummaryThis paper is dealing with particles such as at, autem, nain, sed. uero. operating in poetical context. These words have been previously described by Kroon 1995 in terms of ‘functional grammar’, so we use her work as a framework for our own insight in Catullus’poem, focusing on the rhythmical moves that particles contribute to provide. Often accounted as clitics, our particles may in fact be stressed by a discourse emphasis. Kroon’s description proves to be sound, even in poetical context, but, according to us, remains, somehow, too abstract, inasmuch as it does not explain the oral dimension of discourse organization.

Download Full-text

LEFT DISLOCATION IN NEAR-NATIVE FRENCH

Studies in Second Language Acquisition ◽

10.1017/s0272263111000039 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 33 (3) ◽

pp. 399-432 ◽

Cited By ~ 29

Author(s):

Bryan Donaldson

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Native Speakers ◽

Upper Limits ◽

Different Types ◽

Left Dislocation ◽

L2 Learners ◽

Discourse Organization ◽

Syntactic Properties ◽

Discourse Interface

The present study is concerned with the upper limits of SLA—specifically, mastery of the syntax-discourse interface in successful endstate learners of second-language (L2) French (near-native speakers). Left dislocation (LD) is a syntactic means of structuring spoken French discourse by marking topic. Its use requires speakers to coordinate syntactic and pragmatic or discursive knowledge, an interface at which L2 learners have been shown to encounter difficulties (e.g., Sorace, 1993; Sorace & Filiaci, 2006). The data come from (a) an 8.5-hr corpus that consists of recordings of 10 dyadic conversations between near-native and native speakers of French and (b) two contextualized paper and audio tasks that tested intuitions and preferences regarding LD. Analyses of the near-native speakers’ production of LDs, the syntactic properties of their LDs, and their use of LDs to promote different types of discourse referents to topic status suggest that their mastery of this aspect of discourse organization converges on that of native speakers.

Download Full-text

Acts and the relationship between discourse and grammar

Functions of Language ◽

10.1075/fol.12.1.05han ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

pp. 87-124 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Mike Hannay ◽

Caroline Kroon

Keyword(s):

Considerable Extent ◽

Central Question ◽

Grammatical Structure ◽

Syntactic Structures ◽

Intonation Units ◽

The Status ◽

Discourse Grammar ◽

Discourse Organization ◽

The Relationship

In modelling the discourse–grammar interface, a central question concerns the status of discourse act as the minimal unit of discourse organization and its relation to units of grammatical structure. This paper seeks to clarify the notion of act by defining it as a strategic rather than a conceptual unit, and by setting out a classification of strategic acts. Illustration is then offered for the position that discourse acts are to a very considerable extent realized in English by intonation units and punctuation units. This is done by considering how punctuational variation and cases of intonation/syntax mismatch can be explained in terms of the specific discourse contribution of the units concerned. Although the correlation between discourse acts and intonation/punctuation units remains problematic, in that there may not be a 1 : 1 correspondence, it is still attractive — at least for English — to see the linguistic correlate of acts in intonation and punctuation units rather than in syntactic structures. The paper finishes by considering the implications for the formalizing of relations between discourse, semantics and syntax in Functional Discourse Grammar.

Download Full-text

Semantic agents, syntactic subjects, and discourse topics

Studies in Language ◽

10.1075/sl.24.2.03bec ◽

2000 ◽

Vol 24 (2) ◽

pp. 277-317 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

David Beck

Keyword(s):

Point Of View ◽

Surface Form ◽

Space And Time ◽

Discourse Organization

The Salishan language Lushootseed has been claimed to lack both syntactic subjects and morphosyntactically transitive clauses, a problematic stance from a universalist/typological point of view. This paper offers evidence both for the syntactic role of subject in Lushootseed and the existence of transitive clauses, and examines the sentence- and discourse-level properties of Lushootseed subjects that make them essential for the grounding of events and discourse in both space and time. Their centrality to the discourse-organization of the language, and hence their recoverability, allows their frequent — and, in transitive clauses, obligatory — elision from the surface form of sentences.

Download Full-text

Mot ett bredare arketextualitetsbegrepp: den augustinsk-lutherska diskurstypen i Birgitta Trotzigs Dykungens dotter

AUC PHILOLOGICA ◽

10.14712/24646830.2021.10 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 2021 (1) ◽

pp. 9-36

Author(s):

Krzysztof Bak

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Theory And Practice ◽

Christian Theology ◽

Literary Studies ◽

The Novel ◽

Twentieth Century Literature ◽

Literary Genres ◽

Discourse Organization ◽

High Degree ◽

Century Literature

This article has three aims, all of them related to the theory and practice of intertextuality. Firstly, the article makes an attempt to reconstruct the Augustinian-Lutheran type of discourse. A number of modern theologians and historians of philosophy have observed that the main currents within Christian theology have their basis in a specific discourse organization of textual utterances. With reference to these observations, the article maps out some dominant features of Augustine’s and Luther’s discoursive practices. The type of discourse thus reconstructed contains grammatical, logical-argumentative, narrative and rhetoric-figurative characteristics, and – as a matter of fact – it manifests a high degree of applicability in the field of literary studies. Secondly, the article applies the reconstructed type of discourse to analyze a masterpiece of Swedish twentieth-century literature, the novel Dykungens dotter (The Marsh King’s Daughter, 1985) by Birgitta Trotzig (1929–2013). In several interviews, Trotzig makes evidently contradictory remarks on Augustine and Luther. She dissociates herself from their anthropology at the same time as she hints that their view of human conditions has made a deep impression on her. The article’s application intends to throw light on this precarious hermeneutic situation. The intense presence of the Augustinian-Lutheran type of discourse in the novel made apparent through the application indicates that an interpretation of Trotzig’s writings by means of Augustinian-Lutheran intertexts is hermeneutically motivated in spite of her own negative declarations. Thirdly, the article makes use of the reconstructed type of discourse in order to examin Gérard Genette’s notion of architextuality. There is a theoretical incongruence in his notion. On an explicit definitory level, architextuality includes all types of discourse and modes of enunciation. On a conteptual level, however, the notion of architextuality is constructed on the pattern of literary genres. The article’s application demonstrates that Genette’s notion requires some corrections to live up to its definitory commitments. The Augustinian-Lutheran architext comes into conflict with some of Genette’s linguisticly construed structuralistic categories and demands a more discoursive and hermeneutic way of thinking.

Download Full-text