Investigates extent to which certain co-referential and structural constraints are reflected in the anaphoric noun phrases of written narratives of elementary school writers. Results indicate that poor writers are relatively insensitive to the constraints of the more difficult co-referential context, but that they (poor writers) are as sensitive…

Describes a study to examine the changes that take place in the form and types of discussions about the past as two young, Spanish-speaking girls moved from elicited routines to spontaneous and novel conversations about their past experiences. (HTH)

Describes three experiments that explored the informational roles of emphasis and word order in active sentences. The results, when considered together, strongly implicate recentness, but not emphasis, as an important means of linking temporally contiguous sentences. (HTH)

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)

Textual grammar provides a means of examining the relationship between the sentence and the text as a whole, and it is in that context that the problems of learning a second language become clear and that it becomes important for the teacher to understand how the text functions so as to impart it to students. (MSE)

The nature of meaning as it is developed through interaction between individuals is explored in a discussion of how writers lead readers to understand a text. (DF)

Proposes a model of syntax in which marked structures are conceived as the realization of modes of control that regulate the informational flow of the text at points of threatened discontinuity. Describes two of these modes, found in children's writing, which are concerned with relations of logic and focus. (Author/SED)

Reports on a study indicating children's dependency in oral persuasion on the cooperative nature of dialog and nonverbal vocalizations and their dependence in written persuasion on persuasive strategies found in speech that can be transferred to writing and, concomitantly, their relatively infrequent use of persuasive strategies specific to…

Saint-Exupery's story, "The Little Prince," is analyzed from the point of view of the structures through which the author wishes to inspire and instruct the reader. The use of disguised didactic discourse and the manipulation of words toward this end are examined. (MSE)

Coded campaign speeches recorded during the 1980 American presidential primaries and college lectures using a taxonomy of verbal response modes. Both candidates and lecturers used mostly informative modes, but candidates used relatively more disclosures (subjective information) and fewer edifications (objective information). Candidates…

Analyzes the use of transitional markers in 25 published essays. Concludes that while marker usage at times obfuscates rather than clarifies relationships, it can also enhance the writer's authority and provide both writer and reader with a mental respite before they plunge into the next thought. (MM)

This study focuses on a particular listening pattern in Japanese which occurs by overlapping with the current speaker's incrementing utterance. Applying the Conversational Analysis approach to conversational data, the study delineates how native speakers utilize overlapping listener responses to indicate their strong alignment, and why learners of…

The writing of academic abstracts is more than a tiresome necessity of scholarly life. It is a practice which goes beyond genre and technique to questions of identity and the promotional economies of academic work. In this paper, a series of abstracts from a variety of refereed journals and conferences are deconstructed and a set of questions that…

This collection of papers examines how sign languages are distributed around the world; what occurs when they come in contact with spoken and written languages, and how signers use them in a variety of situations. Each chapter introduces the key issues in a particular area of inquiry and provides a comprehensive review of the literature. The seven…

A taxonomy of metadiscourse--defined as discourse that people use not to expand referential material but to help their readers connect, organize, interpret, evaluate, and develop attitudes toward that material--was proposed in "College Composition and Communication" (Vande Kopple, 1985). More surveying and classifying has been done since…