Summary: Syntax in different discourse genres

Sun Sep 14 22:38:12 UTC 1997

Here is a summary from my student, on whose behalf I posted a query on
syntax in different discourse genres.  -- fjn
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Last week I posted a query to LINGUIST LIST and FUNKNET asking for
references to work on how syntactic constructions differ from one
discourse genre to another. The response was amazing. I would like to
thank all of the following for contacting me: Ramin Akbari, Mark Baltin,
Joyce Tang Boland, Machtelt Bolkestein, Filomena Capucho, John Davis,
Spike Gildea, Chuck Goodwin, Georgia Green, Paul Hopper, Sunny Hyon, Jussi
Karlgren, Jacques Lecavalier, Hyo Sang Lee, Carl Mills, Michael Noonan,
Andy Pawley, Doris Payne, Asya Pereltsvaig, Taylor Roberts, Malcolm Ross,
and Yael Ziv.

By far, the most common response was to tell me to read the work of
Douglas Biber:

Biber, Douglas (1986). Spoken and written textual dimensions in English.
Language 62: 384-414.

Biber, Douglas (1988). Variation across speech and writing. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

Biber, Douglas (1989). A typology of English texts. Linguistics 27: 3-43.

Biber, Douglas (1995). Dimensions of register variation : A
cross-linguistic comparison. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Biber, Douglas and Edward Finegan, Eds. (1994). Sociolinguistic
perspectives on register.  Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.

Here are some of the other suggestions:

Adam, Jean-Michel (1990). Elements de linguistique textuelle. Lige:
Mardaga.

Andersson, Erik.  1975.  ``Style, optional rules and contextual
conditioning.  In it Style and Text - Studies presented to Nils Erik
Enkvist}.  H{\aa}kan Ringbom. (ed.)  Stockholm: Skriptor and Turku:
{\AA}bo Akademi.

Banfield, Ann (1973). Narrative style and the grammar of direct and
indirect speech. Foundations of Language 10: 1-40.

Chafe, Wallace L., Ed. (1980). The Pear stories: Cognitive, cultural, and
linguistic aspects of narrative production. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Chafe, Wallace L. (1994). Discourse, consciousness, and time: The flow and
displacement of conscious experience in speaking and writing. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.

Chafe, Wallace and Jane Danielewicz (1987). Properties of spoken and
written Language. Comprehending oral and written language,  ed. by
Rosalind Horowitz and S. Jay Samuels. San Diego: Academic Press, pp.
83-113.

Chafe, Wallace and Deborah Tannen (1987). Relation between written and
spoken language. Annual Review of Anthropology 16: 383-407.

Charolles, Michel (19??). Les plans d'organisation textuelles: Priodes,
channes, portes et squences. Pratiques 57: 3-13.

Duranri, Alessandro and Elinor Ochs (1979). Left-dislocation in Italian
conversation. Syntax and Semantics, vol. 12: Discourse and syntax,  ed. by
Talmy Givn. New York: Academic Press, pp. 377-417.

English for Specific Purposes [much of relevance in this journal]

Goodwin, Marjorie H. (1990). He-said-she-said: Talk as social organization
among Black children. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Herring, Susan, et al. [are editing a book about textual parameters in
older languages]

Karlgren, Jussi 1996.``Stylistic Variation in an Information
Retrieval Experiment'' In Proceedings NeMLaP 2, Bilkent, September
1996. Ankara: Bilkent University.  (In the Computation and Language
E-Print
Archive: cmp-lg/9608003).

Karlgren, Jussi and Douglass Cutting. 1994. ``Recognizing Text Genres
with Simple Metrics Using Discriminant Analysis'', Proceedings of COLING
94, Kyoto. (In the Computation and Language E-Print Archive:
cmp-lg/9410008).

Labov, William (1972). The transformation of experience in narrative
syntax. Language in the inner city,  ed. by  William Labov. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 354-396.

Lee, Hyo Sang and Sandra A. Thompson (1989). A discourse account of the
Korean accusative marker. Studies in Language 13: 105-128.

Longacre, Robert E. (1972). Hierarchy and universality of discourse
constituents in New Guinea languages (2 vols.). Washington: Georgetown
University Press.

Longacre, Robert E. (1990). Storyline concerns and word order typology in
East and West Africa. Los Angeles: Studies in African Linguistics,
Supplement 10.

Losee, Robert M. Forthcoming. Text windows and phrases differing by
discipline, location in document, and syntactic structure. Computation and
Language E-Print Archive: cmp-lg/9602003.

Menshikov, I. I. 1974. K voprosu o zhanrovo-stilevoy obuslovlennosti
sintaksicheskoy struktury frazy''. (``On genre-dependent stylistic
variation of
the syntactic structure in the clause'') In Voprosy statisticheskoy
stilistiki. Golovin et al. (eds.) 1974.  Kiev: Naukova dumka; Akademia
Nauk
Ukrainskoy SSR.

Mills, Carl (1990). Syntax and the evaluation of college writing: A blind
alley. Language proficiency: Defining, teaching, and testing,  ed. by
Louis A. Arena. New York: Plenum, 107-119.

Mills, Carl. [papers in various LACUS Forums in recent years]

Ochs, Elinor (1979). Planned and unplanned discourse. Syntax and
Semantics, vol. 12: Discourse and Syntax,  ed. by  Talmy Givn. New York:
Academic Press, pp. 51-80.

Ochs, Elinor, Emanuel A. Schegloff, and Sandra A. Thompson, Eds. (1997).
Interaction and grammar. Studies in Interactional Sociolinguistics 13.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [see Introduction]

Pawley, Andrew (1984). School English is nobody's mother tongue:
Reflections on vernacular and school-acquired language. A Berry (Ed.),
Communication.

Pawley, Andrew and Frances Syder (1983). Natural selection in syntax:
Notes on adaptove variation and change in vernacular and literary grammar.
Journal of Pragmatics 7: 551-579.

Pawley, Andrew and Frances Syder (In press). The one clause at a time
hypothesis. ?,  ed. by  Heidi Riggenbach, .

Perrin, Laurent (1994). Mots et noncs mentionn dans le discours. Cahiers
de Linguistique Franaise, Universit de Genve.

Perrin, Laurent (1995). Du dialogue rapport aux reprise diaphoniques.
Cahiers de Linguistique Franaise, Universit de Genve.

Perrin, Laurent (1996). De la structure nonciative et de l'organisation
polyphonique d'un change pistolaire. Cahiers de Linguistique Franaise,
Universit de Genve.

Quakenbush, J. Stephen (1992). Word order and discourse type: An
Austronesian example. Pragmatics of word order flexibility,  ed. by  Doris
L. Payne. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 279-304.

Swales, John (1990). Genre analysis : English in academic and research
settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tannen, Deborah, Ed. (1982). Spoken and written language: Exploring
orality and literacy. Advances in discourse processes 9. Norwood, NJ:
ABLEX.

Virtanen, Tuija (1992). Discourse functions of adverbial placement in
English: Clause initial procedural place descriptions. Abo: Abo Academis
Forlag, Abo Academi University Press.

Frank Jaret