Novel Sentences

[Douglas S. Oliver]

Dear Funknetters, I have been following this discussion with some
interest but not with the concerns expressed so far (unless I
have missed something).  Over the last two + decades, many
functionalists have devoted a good amount of time questioning the
wisdom of giving so much weight to the sentence as a primary unit
of analysis.  Wally Chafe and others have done a good job of
demonstrating the value of using language segments based on
tone/prosody, which do have very real constraints.  I would like
to ask why this focus on the sentence has been renewed.  This has
brought us back to philosophical discussions that often only work
to remove us from functional concerns.  I would like to ask how
we might bring cognitive, biological, social, cultural, etc.
concerns into the discussion, using real discourse examples.
Please don't misunderstand me, I find the discussion so far fun
and generally interesting; I just wonder where the functional
perspective has gone.

-- Douglas

--
|~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~|
|Douglas S. Oliver               |
|Department of Anthropology      |
|University of California        |
|Riverside, CA 92521             |
|e-mail: dsoliver at earthlink.net  |
|    or: douglaso at citrus.ucr.edu |
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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