Contends that contemporary reading of "topos" is inherently metaphorical, having at its root a "place" metaphor with important ontological overtones. Indicates an imbalance by comparing two ways of interpreting the "place" metaphor, and the consequences for critics. (JK)

Investigation of data regarding the use of "so'n" in authentic German speech situations suggests that speakers used the form as a hedging expression indicating uncertainty or discomfort, enabling them to indicate their attitudes about various aspects of the speech situation. (21 references) (Author/CB)

Compares E-Prime, a form of English that eliminates all forms of the verb "to be," with E-Choice, a form of English eliminating pernicious occurrences of conjugated forms of the verb. Criticizes the use of E-Prime for its difficulty making certain statements and its premise that a mechanical device be substituted for the process of…

Provides the comments of D. David Bourland, Jr., inventor of E-Prime (a form of English that eliminates all forms of the verb "to be"), with regard to the articles included in this special issue. Outlines the meaning and uses of E-Prime. Critiques and discusses several of the issue's different articles. (HB)

The concept of grammatical servitude, defined as the absence of semantic choice in linguistic constructions, minimizes dependence on intuition and subjective judgment in syntactic analysis. It also causes the researcher to neglect important communicative resources of the speaker. To remedy this problem, the use of semantics in syntactic analysis…

Examines the various aspects of natural conversation in order to provide a theoretically comprehensive schema that accounts for a conversation's structure. Aspects considered are: (1) speaker-listener initial and turn-change behavior; (2) the listener's speaker-directed behavior; (3) interlistener and simultaneous behaviors; and (4) the function…

Identifies motives for the inversion of various preverbal elements to the end of sentences in Beijing conversational discourse, focusing on such communicative functions and organizational mechanisms as thematization, repair, and afterthought appendage. (32 references) (CB)

Presents a preliminary study of the use of the Spanish preposition "a" with inanimate direct object nouns (DOs). The properties of such constructions at the lexical, sentence, and discourse levels are described, and the general principles that condition the preposition's appearance are discussed. (21 references) (GLR)

In an examination of pronominal disagreements, this study examined how speakers on certain television interview programs resolve problems of agreement with formally singular epicene antecedents. The form most frequently used is "they," and some forms found in written English hardly occur. (54 references) (Author/LB)

Operationalizes the concept of intertextuality by using it to analyze sample texts. Certain dimensions of intertextuality are described that have potential for building a framework for discourse analysis: interdiscursivity, textual transformations, and how texts constitute social identities. (Contains 35 references.) (JP)

This study investigates the relationships between connectedness in discourse and the in-text comments that tutors write on postgraduate essays at a Thai university. Connectedness was divided into cohesion, propositional coherence and interactional coherence which were analysed using Hoey's lexical analysis [Hoey, M. (1991). "Patterns of lexis…

An analysis of English intonation focuses on fall-rise and rise-fall instruction. Fall-rise intonation marks material from which the speaker would derive a precondition for what he is saying, while rise-fall intonation marks material from which the speaker would derive a consequence from what he is saying based on inversion of the clause where the…

The primary goal of translation is to enable an audience in a Target Language to understand a text/discourse which was ultimately not intended for them. The primary goal of text-analysis is to further the understanding of phenomena inside one language. There are several similarities between translation and text-analysis: both translation and…