Uses an analysis of children's interpretations of a complex episode of social interaction to illustrate three features that distinguish them from robot plans and that form a basis for a theory of the development of social action: human plans (1) are social, (2) operate on interpretations, and (3) are used, not just executed. (FL)

Describes discourse development in the sign language of 24 profoundly deaf children. Findings indicate children were acquiring appropriate discourse strategies comparable to those used by hearing children in spoken conversations and adult deaf signers. (DF)

Describes instances in which conversation topics are audibly formulated in a classroom during a one-hour science lesson and how this task may be problematic for both participants and analysts of classroom talk. (HTH)

Examines two texts showing that the relational propositions (frequently implicit) that arise out of a combination of independent clauses involve every clause and that they occur in a pattern of propositions that connects all of the clauses together. Shows how relational propositions are essential to the functioning of the text. (HTH)

Examines the nature of American Sign Language, indicates its intricate morphological structure, and demonstrates one experimental way of uncovering and validating this structure. (FL)

Reviews the methodological issues raised by previous research into the language used by thought-disordered and nondisordered schizophrenics. (FL)

Uses examples of conversation drawn from a mediation session to show how intentions, as discursive formations, are central not only to both narrative structure and interaction sequences but to the politics of subject position in discourse as well. Discusses the management of subject position in terms of critical coherence points. (SR)

Examines how the collaborative scheme is used to balance the demands of accuracy and efficiency during routine and nonroutine pilot-controller communication. Suggests that several communication problems can be traced to nonstandard collaborative practices that tax controller and pilot attention and memory. (SR)

Explores the relationship between linguistic and conceptual structuring of narratives, focusing on linguistic devices used by German and U.S. narrators to identify transitions in text structure. Identifies and outlines two types of narrative orientation: differentiating events and integrating events. (SR)

Examines the influence of interclause connectives on inference generation. Finds that readers incorporate causal knowledge-based inferences in the discourse representations for sentences containing a causal connective, and that connectives elicit inferences that are based on the connective's meaning. (SR)

Demonstrates the value of quantitative analysis of discourse options by focusing on two discourse options for the representation of cause and effect. (HTH)

Discusses focusing, the manner in which speakers center attention on a particular element of discourse, and describes a process model of focusing that specifies what syntactic, semantic, and world knowledge constraints are needed for a hearer to track a speaker's focus in a discourse. (FL)

Examines the narrative story structure of a short American Sign Language narrative using stylistic analysis plus the structure of pausing in the narrative. (FL)

Examines the extent to which the structure of simple conversations influences the subsequent memorability of dialogues. (FL)

Delineates a study showing that jurors arriving at different verdicts differ in the way they compute verdicts from a common evidence base rather than in the structure of their evidence bases. Concludes that the legal system's distinction between evidence comprehension and verdict deliberation is a defensible one. (Author/FL)