The current study examined Thai EFL Mattayom learners' pragmatic discourse of givenness via A-movement constructions. While previous studies focused on Thai undergraduate students and their error production in passive voice, this study innovatively contributes to the field by selecting a different group of participants. The participants in this…

Negative sentences are hard to process when they are presented out of context. When embedded in a context of plausible denial their processing difficulty decreases or is completely eliminated. We investigated in six behavioral experiments whether the processing of negation is eased in a denial context triggered by discourse markers (e.g.…

This study aims to investigate the differences in the realization of request speech act between the IEL (Indonesian English Learners) and the AES (Australian English-Native Speakers), as well as explain the factors influencing these distinctions. The descriptive-qualitative method and discourse completion task (DCT) were used to obtain data in…

In Turkish, null and overt arguments do not show the same distributional properties at discourse level. There are discourse-pragmatic factors affecting this distribution (Kerslake, 1987; Ruhi, 1996; Turan, 1995; Çeltek & Oktar, 2014; Çeltek Kaili, 2017). Previous studies suggest that the acquisition of argument realization system in second…

This study investigated interrogative structures most frequently used by native speakers of French, in an attempt to reconcile differences between language forms taught in the French as a foreign language classroom and those that are encountered in authentic input. Radio, television, and magazine interviews provided multiple examples of…

In order to study problems of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) with morphosyntax, we investigated twenty high-functioning Greek-speaking children (mean age: 6;11) and twenty age- and language-matched typically developing children on environments that allow or forbid object clitics or their corresponding noun phrase. Children with…

This volume contains a selection of papers presented at the 2014 International Conference of Pragmatics and Language Learning at Indiana University. It includes fourteen papers on a variety of topics, with a diversity of first and second languages, and a wide range of methods used to collect pragmatic data in L2 and FL settings. This volume is…

Previous accounts of preverbal subjects in Spanish and European Portuguese (EP) in the literature have debated the syntactic position of these elements. According to some analyses, preverbal subjects are canonical arguments appearing in an A-position (e.g. Goodall 2001, 2002; Suner 2003 for Spanish; Duarte 1997; Costa 2004 for EP). Other analyses…

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

The option of verb-final versus verb-second (V2) order in subordinate clauses in German is subject to regularity when discourse context is taken into account. The artificial rule which places the verb at the end of any subordinate clause obliterates the feel for discourse structure that is still present in colloquial German. The option of using V2…

Examines imperatives regarding their different construction forms as well as the syntactic and pragmatic features of the imperative stem that influence the form and meaning of the tag attached to it. The conclusion is drawn that the imperative tag cannot be best analyzed as merely a frozen expression. (GLR)

Analysis of the distribution of punctors, a class of markers commonly classified as nervous tics, fillers, or signs of hesitation, in one corpus of French is presented. Some aspects of their conditioning are explained in terms of the interaction of etymological, discursive, syntactic, and social constraints. (Author/MSE)

In decoding a text, one chooses the interpretation involving maximal redundancy, selecting meanings that are most likely and least surprising in the relevant context. Clues for this selection of meanings are gathered from phonetic, phonemic, morphological, syntactic, lexical, and stylistic levels. In disambiguating third-person-pronoun references…

The organization of repair in a corpus of conversations in the Lue, Yuan (or Myang), and Siamese dialects of Tai is examined with regard to the preference for self-correction described previously for an English corpus. In both, repair is an identically organized sequential phenomenon involving repair segments during conversation. (CHK)

Examines the relationship between form and use of the reformulation sequence signalled by "c'est-a-dire" in written French and describes this sequence's various functions. The article attempts to show how a modular approach consisting of structural, semantic, pragmatic, and textual components contributes to a new and accurate description of…