The Grammar of Discourse / Edition 2

by Robert E. Longacre

Overview

In that The Anatomy of Speech Notions (1976) was the precursor to The Grammar of Discourse (1983), this revision embodies a third "edition" of some of the material that is found here. The original intent of the 1976 volume was to construct a hierarchical arrangement of notional categories, which find surface realization in the grammatical constructions of the various languages of the world. The idea was to marshal the categories that every analyst-regardless of theoretical bent-had to take account of as cognitive entities. The volume began with a couple of chapters on what was then popularly known as "case grammar," then expanded upward and downward to include other notional categories on other levels. Chapters on dis­ course, monologue, and dialogue were buried in the center of the volume. In the 1983 volume, the chapters on monologue and dialogue discourse were moved to the fore of the book and the chapters on case grammar were made less prominent; the volume was then renamed The Grammar of Discourse. The current revision features more clearly than its predecessors the intersection of discourse and pragmatic concerns with grammatical structures on various levels. It retains and expands much of the former material but includes new material reflecting current advances in such topics as salience clines for discourse, rhetorical relations, paragraph structures, transitivity, ergativity, agency hierarchy, and word­ order typologies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780306452352
Publisher:	Springer US
Publication date:	06/30/1996
Series:	Topics in Language and Linguistics
Edition description:	2nd ed. 1996
Pages:	362
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.04(d)

Table of Contents

1 Monologue Discourse: Typology and Salience.- 2 Monologue Discourse: Plot and Peak.- 3 Combinations of Predications.- 4 Intersentential Relations: Etic Paragraph Types.- 5 Repartee: Dialogue Paragraphs.- 6 Cases or Roles.- 7 Case Frames.- 8 Surface Structure of Clauses.- 9 A Framework for Discourse Analysis.- Appendix: The Notional and Surface Structure of English Clauses.- References.

Editorial Reviews

Covers monologue discourse, intersentential relations, surface structure of clauses, and a framework for discourse analysis. This second edition offers expanded coverage of paragraph and clause structure, and solves the problem of how holistic concerns of structure relate to the constituent structure of discourse. Can be used as a text for first-year graduate courses in linguistics, and as a reference for linguistics researchers and graduate students interested in discourse analysis and text linguistics. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

From reviews of the First Edition:
‘A comprehensive and cohesive description of text discourse ... provides a challenging and stimulating vehicle for expanding the horizons of readers having a concern for discourse analysis.'
Applied Psycholinguistics
‘Because of the richness and breadth of its examples (drawn from many languages), the book should be of interest to those who are seriously interested in the psychology of text and discourse processing.'
Contemporary Psychology

From the Publisher