Previous findings have demonstrated that hemispheric organization in deaf users of American Sign Language (ASL) parallels that of the hearing population, with the left hemisphere showing dominance for grammatical linguistic functions and the right hemisphere showing specialization for non-linguistic spatial functions. The present study addresses two further questions: first, do extra-grammatica...

This study aims to test quantitatively whether lled pauses (FPs) may highlight discourse structure. More speci cally, it is rst investigated whether FPs are more typical in the vicinity of major discourse boundaries. Secondly, the FPs are analyzed acoustically, to check whether those occurring at major discourse boundaries are segmentally and prosodically di erent from those at shallower breaks...

According to many research findings, the presence of discourse markers (DMs) enhances readers’ comprehension of the texts they read. However, there is a paucity of research on the relationship between knowledge of DMs and reading comprehension (RC) and the present study explores the relationship between them. Knowledge of DMs is measured through examining the subjects’ recognition of DMs. To ca...

(2003). Towards a taxonomy of a set of discourse markers in dialog: a theoretical and computational linguistic account. Abstract Discourse markers are verbal and non-verbal devices that mark transition points in communication. They presumably facilitate the construction of a mental representation of the events described by the discourse. A taxonomy of these relational markers is one important b...

In this paper we show that interruptions are important elements in the interactive character of discourse and in the resolution of issues of cognitive uncertainty and planning. By representing discourse graphically, we also show that interruptions are part of the local and global coherence that is brought about through the systematic phrase-to-phrase prosodic patterns of discourse. The specific...


 Context is the environment that forms discourse and one of key factors influencing comprehension. Language communication not conducted in a vacuum but specific language environment. plays vital role analysis. This paper investigated development categories context analyzed disadvantage traditional way analysis without considering context. Based on Hu's classification context, this many ex...

Abstract This study examines discourse functions of Korean ‘yes’ words from an interactional perspective based on naturally-occurring conversation data. Tokens yey, ney, ey, ung, um, and e in are widely recognized as affirmative responses. A close examination these tokens, however, reveals wide-ranging through which speakers express active engagement, share information, negotiate meaning, maint...

We are compiling a corpus of Dutch texts annotated with discourse structure and lexical cohesion, containing initially 80 texts from expository and persuasive genres. We are using this resource for corpus-based studies of discourse relations, discourse markers, cohesion, and genre differences. We are also exploring the possibilities of automatic text segmentation and semi-automatic discourse an...

This review of research considers the occurrence and function of Spanish discourse markers and other particles in indigenous speech. I discuss important research that has examined these phenomena and refer to studies of bilingual discourse markers in other non-indigenous language contact situations to address unresolved issues concerning the form and function of these particles in indigenous la...