Alexis Patterson's paper researches equity in groupwork in the science classroom by looking at micro-interactions. She points to the key features of student voice, student visibility and student authority while addressing the teachers' role in creating a more equitable and productive talk in science classrooms. This forum paper aims at continuing…

Explores the theme of topicality, focusing on two books that contribute to the understanding of possessive construction and grammar.(Author/VWL)

Describes and compares restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses and shows that, when studying their superficial differences, there is no need for construction-specific stipulations that distinguish between them. All the superficial differences between the two are derived from the single basic difference that one is a modifier and the other is not.…

Analyzes the distribution of information in so-called "synonymous" sentences in the context of a semantic perspective. (AM)

Discusses the presence of an implied author and its appropriateness as a rhetorical device in technical discourse. Concludes that it enhances the information transfer from writer to text to reader. (MS)

Explores the hypothesis that speech acts cannot be located without bringing in knowledge beyond that of the textual referent itself. Points out that speech acts are made up of sentence context pairs through which one must search for a formal motion of context as a framing of speech activities. (FL)

Argues that in an unmarked sentence the verbs will be stressed, and that in determining patterns of sentence stress the vital consideration should be the speaker's point of view. (AM)

There are three dominant conceptions of functional sentence perspective (FSP): (1) a sentence should be analyzed into several segments, each having a different degree of what is called communicative dynamism; (2) a sentence should be analyzed into two segments, the theme and the rheme; and (3) a sentence should be analyzed into two segments, the…

Two views of coherence in written discourse can be analyzed and then blended into a theory of coherence that selects the best of both views. One view is H. Miller's observation that all coherences are tentative and that the composing process is richer than its products. Another view is A. D. Van Nostrand's suggestion that the two elementary…

Argues that discontinuities between sentences can often be explained in terms of syntactic relationships within individual sentences. (AA)

Presents a framework for expressing how choices are made in systemic grammars. Framework represents grammar as combination of systemic syntactic description and explicit choice processes called "choice experts." (DF)

Refers to an article by H. Sopher entitled "Discourse Analysis as an Aid to Literary Interpretation." Argues that such interpretations are more clearly supported by a surface structure analysis. Proposes a different approach based on the use of grammatical and syntactic features. (Author/MES)

Through corpus analysis and experimentation, this article demonstrates that both grammatical complexity (heaviness) and discourse status (newness) simultaneously and independently influence word order in two English constructions. Argues that heavy and new constituents facilitate the processes of planning and production. (Author/VWL)

It is contended that there are such things as discourse blocs, and that they are composed of discourse units glued together into a contextuated whole by bloc signals. There are three kinds of structures with which it is necessary to deal in order to discuss coherent discourse: the discourse bloc, the discourse unit, and the bloc signal.…

Presents an informal history and criticism of a rhetorical style that proposed a set of rules designed to pin words and syntax down so that a writer's meaning could not be misconstrued. Describes how the style was appropriated for textbook use by an innovative group of American writers during the mid-nineteenth century. (AEW)