Contents 10
Abbreviations 14
1 Introduction 16
1.1 Introduction 16
1.2 Spoken and written language in linguistics 19
1.3 The data 21
1.3.1 Data from English, German, and Russian 22
1.3.2 Adequacy of the data 25
1.4 Genres: dimensions, individuals, and education 29
1.5 Spontaneous spoken language 37
2 Sentences and Clauses 43
2.1 Introduction 43
2.2 Sentences in spontaneous spoken language: an overview 44
2.3 Sentences in spoken texts 47
2.4 Text-sentences in spoken language 49
2.4.1 Intonational criteria 49
2.4.2 Intuitions about sentences in spoken language 50
2.4.3 The sentence: a changing concept 56
2.5 The sentence as a unit of analysis 61
2.5.1 Sentences and clauses in spontaneous dialogue 61
2.5.2 Sentences and syntactic analysis 64
2.5.3 Sentences, clauses, and distribution 71
2.5.4 Spoken language with fragmented syntax 73
2.5.5 Fragmented syntax in spoken Russian 76
2.6 Conclusion 86
3 Clauses: Type, Combination, and Integration 87
3.1 Introduction 87
3.2 Clauses 91
3.2.1 Definition of clause 91
3.2.2 Clauses and situations 93
3.3 Constraints on complexity in spontaneous spoken language 94
3.4 Main and subordinate clauses 95
3.4.1 Finite constructions missing from the corpus of spoken language 96
3.4.2 Non-finite constructions missing from the corpus of spoken language 100
3.4.3 Passives 103
3.4.4 Proportion of main and subordinate clauses 104
3.5 Form and function: when a subordinate clause is not a subordinate clause 109
3.5.1 English 109
3.5.2 Spoken Russian 110
3.6 Order of main clause and subordinate clause 115
3.7 WH constructions 119
3.7.1 Relative clauses 120
3.7.2 WH clefts 135
3.7.3 Headless relative clauses in Russian 145
3.8 Conclusion 147
4 Noun Phrases: Complexity and Configuration 148
4.1 Introduction 148
4.2 Complexity of noun phrases 150
4.2.1 Noun phrases in written English 150
4.2.2 Noun phrases in spontaneous speech 154
4.3 Spontaneous spoken English 158
4.3.1 The data and its coding 158
4.3.2 The spontaneous spoken narrative 160
4.3.3 Extract from spontaneous conversation 168
4.3.4 A newspaper text 168
4.4 Spoken and written Russian 174
4.4.1 Russian conversation and Russian newspaper text 175
4.4.2 Split noun phrases 179
4.5 Noun phrases in spoken German 184
4.6 Split NPs: a problem for constituent structure 191
4.6.1 'Split' NPs in Russian 192
4.6.2 'Split' NPs in Australian languages 195
4.7 Theoretical implications 197
4.7.1 Configurational languages and spoken language 197
4.7.2 Scrambling and 'split' NPs 198
4.7.3 Functional constituents as heads 201
5 Focus Constructions 205
5.1 Introduction 205
5.2 Concepts for the analysis of discourse 208
5.2.1 Focus (1) 208
5.2.2 Deixis 209
5.2.3 Theme and thematization 210
5.2.4 Given and new information 210
5.3 Results 211
5.4 Focus (2) 213
5.4.1 Overview 213
5.4.2 Halliday 213
5.4.3 Chafe: components of contrastiveness 215
5.4.4 Dik: extended notion of focus 215
5.4.5 Vallduvi 217
5.4.6 Grosz and Sidner: focus space and transition 217
5.5 Macro- and micro-focus 218
5.5.1 A text schema 218
5.5.2 Transitions and contrasts 220
5.5.3 Macro- and micro-focus in a spoken Russian text 221
5.6 Given 224
5.6.1 Ellipsis 224
5.6.2 Ellipsis in Russian 227
5.7 Highlighting devices 244
5.7.1 Knowledge stores and focus spaces: highlighting entities 245
5.7.2 Existential and existential-possessive constructions 245
5.7.3 New entities in written texts 246
5.7.4 New entities in the Map Task dialogues 247
5.7.5 SEE and KNOW 248
5.7.6 Highlighting constructions in German 251
5.7.7 NP-Clause 252
5.7.8 Highlighting new propositions 257
5.8 Russian word order 274
5.9 Conclusion 277
6 Focus Constructions: Clefts and like 278
6.1 Introduction 278
6.2 An overview of the clefts 278
6.2.1 Cleft types 278
6.2.2 The main points in the analysis 279
6.2.3 Distribution of clefts in the data 280
6.2.4 Theoretical preliminaries 282
6.2.5 RWH clefts 289
6.2.6 WH clefts 306
6.2.7 IT clefts 315
6.2.8 Conclusions 320
6.3 LIKE 321
6.3.1 Previous accounts of LIKE 322
6.3.2 Why LIKE is not a pause filler 327
6.3.3 Non-contrastive focus 330
6.3.4 LIKE as a non-contrastive focuser 332
6.3.5 LIKE in the spontaneous conversations 343
6.3.6 Conclusion 349
7 Historical Linguistics and Typology 350
7.1 Introduction 350
7.2 Historical Linguistics 350
7.3 Typology 353
7.3.1 English conditional constructions 353
7.3.2 Participles and gerund 355
7.3.3 Negation 356
7.3.4 Relative clauses 357
7.3.5 Clause combining 368
7.3.6 Subject-prominent and topic-prominent languages 378
7.3.7 Noun phrases 381
7.3.8 Word order 384
7.4 Conclusion 387
8 Written Language, First Language Acquisition, and Education 388
8.1 Introduction 388
8.2 Chomsky's theory of language acquisition 388
8.3 A critique of Chomsky's theory 390
8.3.1 Introduction 390
8.3.2 Magnasyntax vs. the syntax of spontaneous spoken language 391
8.3.3 Magnasyntax and the goals of generative grammar 393
8.3.4 Misuse of magnasyntax in discussions of first language acquisition 396
8.3.5 The non-degenerate nature of written language 398
8.3.6 Computationally complex structure-dependent rules, formulas, and imitation 399
8.3.7 Creativity 409
8.3.8 How long do children take to acquire their native language? 411
8.3.9 Degrees of competence and literacy 415
8.3.10 Grammaticality judgements 418
8.3.11 Mechanisms of language acquisition 421
8.4 Language processing by humans and by computer 434
8.5 Literacy and education 436
Epilogue 441
References 442
Postscript 458
Index 468
A 468
B 468
C 468
D 470
E 471
F 472
G 473
H 473
I 474
J 475
K 475
L 475
M 475
N 476
O 477
P 477
Q 478
R 478
S 479
T 480
U 481
V 481
W 481
Z 482