Examines the impact of listeners on speakers' later memory for events. Shows that attentive listeners facilitate long-term memory, whereas situations with distracted listeners are difficult to distinguish from situations with no listener and with no recounting at all. (SR)

Compares three theories of coherence relations that differ in formality, broadness of coverage, and linguistic detail. Applies them to the concrete task of text analysis. Organizes the information according to principles of linguistic "stratification,""metafunction," and "paradigmatic/syntagmatic axiality," providing a three-way classification…

Tests D. Schiffrin's hypothesis that the choice between "CAUSE so RESULT" sequences and "RESULT because CAUSE" sequences is determined by topic continuity against British conversational data from the London-Lund Corpus of Spoken English. Produces results similar to Schiffrin's. Concludes that these studies reveal a cohesive…

Investigates whether children's representations of the linguistic description of a goal-directed event was similar to their representation of the same event observed visually. Finds that mode of presentation did not affect the recall of most important actions, but that verbal description led to recall characterized by greater cohesion than visual…

Investigates creation and interpretation of nonlexicalized categories within discourse, as indicated by the use of general extenders. Shows that such categories are locally contingent, depend on contextually salient features for identifying similarity among members, can be created through contrast or contiguity, and clearly depend on assumptions…

Outlines an attempt to use artificial intelligence formalisms as a formal language of description for the complex conversational behavior that occurs in ethnographic interviews. Discusses three kinds of coherence and uses them to analyze the text of an interview. (FL)

Transcripts of 11 young children's speech to adults were found to include hints and question directives. (FL)

Notes that the empirical research in language psychology can be helpful in reorganizing the domain of literary studies. Presents a survey of the major considerations in regard to such an undertaking and provides a specific demonstration. (FL)

Investigates the degree to which listeners are sensitive to the social relations expressed in choice of a name when referring to a third person during a conversation. Concludes that the social information inherent in names is picked up by readers and encoded into memory. (HB)

Finds that zero quotatives (where direct speech is reported with neither a reporting verb nor an attributed speaker) are found when a speaker is clearly constructing attitude; where the omission of a quotative may serve some dramatic effect; and at sights where conversational partners are displaying strongly convergent behavior. (SR)

Suggests that two components of natural discourse (pragmatic information and knowledge about discourse style) play a role in memory for the surface form of sentences in discourse. Shows that recognition memory increased as a function of information about the speaker's positive and negative attitudes and that substantial verbatim memory was…

Offers a brief overview of the Structure Building Framework, a simple framework for describing the cognitive processes and mechanisms involved in discourse comprehension. Reviews the seminal work on which it is based (the first decade of structure-building research); and recounts the research conducted by the author to test the Structure Building…

Analyzes different strategies used by speakers/writers and hearers/readers to deal with underspecified coherence relations, phrased in terms of Horn's (1984) Q- and R- principle. Presents data from the psycholinguistic literature on the interpretation of underspecified relations and data from language-acquisition research suggesting that both…

Describes conversational joint remembering in terms of three hierarchically related functions--framing and orientation, correspondence functions, and validation function. Highlights the importance of studying remembering as a social activity governed by the setting in which it occurs. (JD)

Indicates that the main determinant of implicitness, when defined in terms of "inferrable" vs. "evoked" information, was the variable of content, not that of modality: Abstract texts contained more inferrable information than did narrative texts, regardless of modality. (NKA)