Part 1: Types of Text 1
1 Means of Production: Number of Speakers 3
1.1 Discourse dimensions 3
1.2 Monologue versus dialogue 4
1.3 Conversational turns and moves in dialogue 4
2 Type of Content: Text Genres 7
2.1 Broad categories of genre 8
2.2 Embedding and communicative intent 9
3 Manner of Production: Style and Register 11
3.1 Individual style 11
3.2 Register 12
3.3 A note on genre 13
3.4 A note on dialect 14
4 Medium of Production: Oral Versus Written 15
4.1 Frequency of repetition 15
4.2 Deviations from default orders 16
4.3 Organization 16
4.4 Preciseness 17
4.5 Paralinguistic signals 17
4.6 Practical applications 17
Part 2: Common Characteristics in Discourses 19
5 Coherence 21
5.1 Coherent text 22
5.2 Context and contextualization 24
6 Cohesion 27
6.1 Descriptive expressions alluding to entities mentioned earlier 28
6.2 Identity 28
6.3 Lexical relations 30
6.4 Morphosyntactic patterns 30
6.5 Signals of relations between propositions 31
6.6 Intonation patterns 31
6.7 How important is cohesion? 32
7 Thematic Groupings and Thematic Discontinuities 35
7.1 Thematic groupings 35
7.2 Why chunk here? 36
7.3 Dimensions of thematic continuity in narrative 37
7.4 Cohesive ties and thematic groupings 37
7.5 Practical considerations 40
8 Text Charting 43
8.1 What kind of text should I begin with? 44
8.2 The basic chart 44
8.3 Conventions for charting 46
8.4 Indicating thematic groupings 47
9 Mental Representations Revisited 49
9.1 What mental representations represent 50
9.2 Hierarchy 50
9.3 Concepts 51
9.4 Arriving at mental representations 51
10 Activation Status, Definiteness, and Referential Status 55
10.1 Activation status: three processes 56
10.2 Definiteness 58
10.3 Generic reference 58
10.4 Referential status 58
10.5 More on activation status 59
11 Information Structure of Sentences 61
11.1 Focus and scope of focus 62
11.2 Focus, topic, and sentence articulations 63
11.3 General signals of focus 65
11.4 Overall structuring 67
11.5 Contrast 71
11.6 Signals of overall structuring 73
11.7 Marked versus unmarked structuring 74
11.8 Discourse function of configurations 76
12 Foreground and Background Information 79
12.1 Foreground and background 79
12.2 Events 81
12.3 Nonevents 82
12.4 Signals of kinds of information 83
12.5 Markedness in grounding 84
13 Signaling Relations Between Propositions 87
13.1 The preferred order of propositions in VO and OV languages 89
13.2 Some constraints on semantic relations 90
13.3 Connectives 91
14 The Reporting of Conversation 97
14.1 The presentation of speech 98
14.2 The type of information of reported conversation 99
14.3 Changes of direction in reported conversations 100
15 Conventionalized Aspects of Text Organization 103
15.1 The story schema 103
15.2 Patterns of repetition 107
15.3 Convention in oral and written traditions 107
Part 3: Participant Reference 109
16 Basic Notions of Reference 111
16.1 Linguistic devices for reference 111
16.2 What systems of reference must do 112
17 Strategies of Reference 115
17.1 Sequential (look-back) strategies 115
17.2 VIP strategies 116
17.3 Describing systems of reference 122
18 A Methodology for Analyzing Reference Patterns 125
18.1 Draw up an inventory of ways of encoding references to
participants 125
18.2 Prepare a chart of participant encoding in a text 126
18.3 Track the participants 128
18.4 Identify the context of participant references 129
