Suggests that a factor underlying the complex analysis of prose is amount of elaboration. Reports findings of two experiments supporting this idea. (FL)

Examines the role played by relative clauses in American Sign Language. (FL)

Explores the hypothesis that speech acts cannot be located without bringing in knowledge beyond that of the textual referent itself. Points out that speech acts are made up of sentence context pairs through which one must search for a formal motion of context as a framing of speech activities. (FL)

Discusses the process of understanding of intent by which participants, through the comparative interpretation of a series of cues and symbols as they are revealed in speech, develop categories for a contextual model of communication. Argues that discourse is essentially dialogic and phenomenologically realizable. (FL)

Details a study designed to determine whether different titles caused different structures to be set up for the same text material. (FL)

Contends that the organization of comments made by one discourse participant on the contributions of another reveals a hierarchy of relevance and informativity. Illustrates this with discourse samples subjected to a particular method of analysis. (FL)

Presents a framework for expressing how choices are made in systemic grammars. Framework represents grammar as combination of systemic syntactic description and explicit choice processes called "choice experts." (DF)

Examines whether specific characteristics of American Sign Language (ASL) syntax affect perceptual processing of the language. Findings support the psychological reality of sentence embedding processes in ASL, further supporting the claim that visually based languages achieve the same functional goals as speech, although with different means. (FL)

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

Describes three experiments that investigated the influence of a context sentence on the processing of a subsequent sentence. Concludes that context can affect within-sentence processes in comprehension. Test materials used in the experiments are appended. (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)

Proposes a top-down procedural model for the dynamic extraction and use of context structure to resolve references. (FL)

Outlines some problems that emerged when speech act theory was applied to the analysis of natural discourse, traces these problems to basic flaws or misconceptions in J. R. Searle's theory, and proposes an alternative view of speech acts within the complex organization of discourse processes. (FL)

Discusses the sources of information in oral language. Uses converging evidence from prosody, pausing, structural and semantic parallelism, and stylistic analysis to argue for a series of hypotheses about the units that organize the construction of narrative discourse. Provides examples and appendixes. (JD)