THE ROLE OF SYNTACTIC STRUCTURE IN DISCOURSE STRUCTURE - SIGNALING LOGICAL AND PROMINENCE RELATIONS

A qualitative investigation of varying syntactic patterns and their ef fects on discourse structure was undertaken. The discourse under consi deration was the lectures of two first-semester teaching assistants (T As) in a botany lab, one a native speaker of American English whose di scourse was perceived as relatively easy to follow the other of Korean whose discourse was perceived as relatively difficult to follow. Each TA gave a lecture accompanying a single set of slides. A qualitative analysis of the two texts revealed a number of differences in discours e structure, including different patterns of hypotaxis and parataxis.1 It is argued that the hypotactic constructions present in the NSs dis course provide explicit signals of logical and prominence relations wh ich are missing or used in an unexpected manner in the NNS's discourse . The results offer support for a discourse framework which recognizes that particular linguistic forms function as contextualization cues ( Gumperz 1982a, 1982b) which provide listeners with information concern ing how to integrate information into the ongoing discourse.