Discourse Grammar

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The discourse grammar (short DG ) or engl. discourse grammar is a grammatical research direction that arose on the one hand from the analysis of spoken and written discourse and on the other hand from more recent work on parenthetical expressions ( parentheticals ), but also owes suggestions to Simon C. Dik's study of extra-clausal constituents . Founded by Gunther Kaltenböck, Bernd Heine and Tania Kuteva, this research direction is based on the distinction between two principles of grammatical organization, one of which relates to the structure of sentences and the other to the linguistic organization beyond the sentence. According to the perspective that is this line of research based, linguistic units, such as formulas of social exchange, interjections ( interjections ), discourse markers ( discourse markers ) and other prefabricated expressions ( prefabs ), an important place in shaping the linguistic discourse one; in many other models of linguistics , however, they are only assigned a marginal role.

Influences

The Discourse Grammar (DG) owes its existence to a number of different publications and researches, not least the functional grammar ( Functional Grammar ) by Simon C. Dik, which assumes a differentiation between two forms of linguistic material, as clausal constituents or extra-clausal constituents . In addition, it has been heavily influenced by research on the nature of parenthetical categories and the concept of supplement .

Principles and terms

DG is made up of all linguistic means that are used to create texts - regardless of whether they are spoken or written texts. It is understood on the one hand as an activity, but on the other hand as a knowledge store, which consists of an inventory of linguistic units and the possibilities of their combinability. In this case, a fundamental distinction between two areas of the language planning is made, the grammar as a set ( Sentence Grammar ) or thetic grammar thetical Grammar be referred to. The Sentence Grammar is composed of propositional terms and sentences and their connection. It forms the only or the main subject of linguistics. The basic unit of the thetical grammar is made up of theticals , i.e. units of linguistic discourse whose function extends beyond the framework of a sentence. Theticals are syntactically, semantically and usually also prosodically separated from units of the Sentence Grammar. Parenthetical constructions belong to these basic units, but they are not limited to the latter. The main categories of Thetical Grammar include conceptual theticals (e.g. discourse markers) as well as vocatives, formulas of social exchange and interjections. Although the two areas are structurally distinct, there are different forms of interaction between the two.

The most important form of interaction concerns the cooptation cooptation , an operation with the help of which pieces of the Sentence Grammar, such as sentences, phrases, words or other parts, are converted into the use of the Thetical Grammar.

Applications and other work

DG is a newer research direction that has so far only found limited application. The focus of the investigation has so far been on comment clauses , discourse markers, final particles , final particles , and insubordination . As the subject of the description, the DG has so far largely limited itself to English; more recently the study has been extended to non-European languages. There is already a detailed study of Akie , a traditional wild- hunting language from Tanzania that belongs to the Nilotic language family . There is a grammatical sketch of the language, an investigation of theticals for the organization of texts, and the Discourse Grammar has also been used to describe institutional frames on the basis of spoken texts. Another part of the research has been devoted to the analysis of language contact. As this work has shown, borrowed discourse markers play an important role in text design in language contact. Furthermore, the work indicates that the distinction between the areas of Sentence Grammar and Thetical Grammar can contribute a new perspective on the question of the origin and development of human language (s).

Finally, a significant part of the research is devoted to the neurological basis of language use. Results of this research suggest that the distinction between the two areas of grammar shows some correspondences in the activation of the human brain. In particular, the findings so far indicate that there appears to be a connection between the use of the thetical grammar and activity in the right hemisphere.

Related work

The fact that the planning and design of linguistic discourse extends over two different dimensions at the same time is nothing new. In some psycholinguistic studies on language understanding, for example, there is a dichotomy between propositional representation and discourse model comparable to the distinction between sentence grammar and thetical grammar , and in neurolinguistic discourse analysis between referential speech and modalizing speech . Similar dichotomies can be found in other research traditions, each highlighting certain aspects of the dichotomy. The distinctions between microgrammar and macrogrammar of the discourse structure, between analytical and holistic coding, or between conceptual and procedural meaning in the theory of relevance grammar show special similarities with the Discourse Grammar .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Dik, Simon C. 1997. The Theory of Functional Grammar, Part 2: Complex and Derived Constructions . Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
  2. ↑ Dehé, Nicole and Yordanka Kavalová 2007. Parentheticals . Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamin.
  3. ↑ Huddleston, Rodney and Geoffrey K. Pullum 2002. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  4. ↑ Kaltenböck, Gunther, Bernd Heine, and Tania Kuteva. 2011. On thetical grammar. Studies in Language 35, 4: 848-893.
  5. ↑ Kaltenböck, Gunther, Bernd Heine, and Tania Kuteva. 2015. On theticals: A "rootless" analysis of I think . In Stefan Schneider (ed.), Parenthesis and Ellipsis: Cross-Linguistic and Theoretical Perspectives . Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  6. ↑ Heine, Bernd, Gunther Kaltenböck, Tania Kuteva, and Haiping Long. 2013. An outline of discourse grammar. In Shannon Bischoff and Carmen Jany (eds.), Functional Approaches to Language . Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 175-233.
  7. ↑ Kaltenböck, Gunther and Bernd Heine. 2014. Sentence grammar vs. thetical grammar: two competing domains. In Brian MacWhinney, Andrej Malchukov, and Edith Moravcsik (eds.), Competing motivations in grammar and usage . Oxford: Oxford University Press. 348-363.
  8. ↑ Kaltenböck, Gunther, Bernd Heine, and Tania Kuteva. 2011. On thetical grammar. Studies in Language 35, 4: 848-893.
  9. ↑ Heine, Bernd, Gunther Kaltenböck, and Tania Kuteva. forthcoming. On insubordination and cooptation. In Nicholas Evans and Honoré Watanabe (eds.), Dynamics of Insubordination . Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamin.
  10. ↑ Heine, Bernd 2013. On discourse markers: Grammaticalization, pragmaticalization, or something else? Linguistics 51,6: 1205-1247.
  11. ↑ Heine, Bernd, Gunther Kaltenböck, and Tania Kuteva. 2012. On the evolution of utterance-final particles. To appear in Werner Abraham and Elly van Gelderen (eds.), Final Particles . Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamin.
  12. ↑ Heine, Bernd, Gunther Kaltenböck, and Tania Kuteva. forthcoming. On insubordination and cooptation. In Nicholas Evans and Honoré Watanabe (eds.), Dynamics of Insubordination . Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamin.
  13. ↑ König, Christa, Bernd Heine and Karsten Legère. 2015. The Akie Language of Tanzania: A Sketch of Discourse Grammar . Tokyo: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Research Institute for Languages ​​and Cultures of Asia and Africa.
  14. ↑ König, Christa, Bernd Heine and Karsten Legère. 2015. Discourse Markers in Akie, a Southern Nilotic Language of Tanzania. In Osamu Hieda (ed.), Information Structure and Nilotic Languages . Tokyo: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Research Institute for Languages ​​and Cultures of Asia and Africa.
  15. ↑ Heine, Bernd, Christa König and Karsten Legère. 2015. On institutional frames in Akie: a discourse grammar approach. In Osamu Hieda (ed.), Information Structure and Nilotic Languages . Tokyo: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Research Institute for Languages ​​and Cultures of Asia and Africa.
  16. ↑ Heine, Bernd. forthcoming. Language contact and extra-clausal constituents: The case of discourse markers. In Gunther Kaltenböck, Evelien Keizer, and Arne Lohmann (eds.), Outside the Clause . Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamin.
  17. ↑ Heine, Bernd, Gunther Kaltenböck, and Tania Kuteva 2013. On the origin of grammar. In Lefebvre, Claire, Bernard Comrie and Henri Cohen (eds.), New Perspectives on the Origins of Language . Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamin. Pp. 379-405.
  18. ↑ Heine, Bernd, Tania Kuteva and Gunther Kaltenböck. 2014. Discourse Grammar, the dual process model, and brain lateralization: Some correlations. Language & Cognition 6, 1: 146-180.
  19. ↑ Heine, Bernd, Gunther Kaltenböck, Tania Kuteva, and Haiping Long. 2015. On Some Correlations between Grammar and Brain Lateralization. Oxford Handbooks Online in Linguistics . New York: Oxford University Press.
  20. ^ Gernsbacher, M. 1990. Language Comprehension as Structure Building . Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
  21. ^ Prat, Chantel S., Debra L. Long, and Kathleen Baynes. 2007. The representation of discourse in the two hemispheres: An individual differences investigation. Brain and Language 100, 3: 283-294.
  22. ↑ Nespoulous, JL 1980. De deux comportements verbaux de base: reférentiel et modalisateur. De leur dissociation dans le discours aphasique. Cahiers de Psychologie 23: 195-210.
  23. ↑ Nespoulous, JL, code, C., Virbel, J., and Lecours, AR 1998. Hypotheses on the dissociation between "referential" and "modalizing" verbal behavior in aphasia. Applied Psycholinguistics 19: 311-331.
  24. ↑ Haselow, Alexander 2013. Arguing for a wide conception of grammar: The case of final particles in spoken discourse. Folia Linguistica 47, 2: 375-424.
  25. ^ Pawley, Andrew 2009. Grammarians 'languages ​​versus humanists' languages ​​and the place of speech act formulas in models of linguistic competence. In Roberta Corrigan, Edith A. Moravcsik, Hamid Ouali, and Kathleen M. Wheatley (eds.), Formulaic Language. Volume 1: Distribution and Historical Change . Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamin. 3-26.
  26. ^ Blakemore, Diane 2002. Relevance and Linguistic Meaning. (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, 99.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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