The grammar of discourse

The Second Edition of the Grammar of Discourse critically evaluates and updates its predecessor's major points, with new chapters increasing the coverage of paragraph and clause structure - the latter being handled in a new chapter which solves a problem posed in the original edition: how holistic concerns of structure, especially the recognition of different strands of information, relate to the constituent structure of discourse.

The insights contained in this chapter create an opportunity to tie in current discussions of transitivity, ergativity, the antipassive, agency hierarchy, order-preserving transformations, and word-order concerns into the structure of discourse.

The Grammar of Discourse, Second Edition is extremely useful as a reference for linguistics researchers and graduate students interested in discourse analysis and textlinguistics. With material tested in classes at the University of Texas at Arlington, this influential work merits serious consideration as a text for first-year graduate courses in linguistics.