Discourse markers can clearly indicate the organization of discourse, remind the hearer of the preceding and the following contents, and express clearly the concrete speech acts. The aims of this study are to explore the relationship between the discourse-marker-based model and listening comprehension as well as the different effects of such a kind of instruction on liberal arts and science stu...

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...

In order to generate cohesive discourse, many of the relations holding between text segments need to be signalled to the reader by means of cue words, or discourse markers. Programs usually do this in a simplistic way, e.g., by using one marker per relation. In reality, however, language ooers a very wide range of markers from which informed choices should be made. In order to account for the v...

• Temporal discourse markers such as after, before or while are commonly described as triggers for discourse relations expressing a temporal relation (Mann and Thompson, 1987; Knott, 1996). However, only little research has been done regarding the interaction of such discourse markers with the context within a multi-sentence discourse. Lascarides & Oberlander (1993), for instance, note that sen...

The purpose of this article is to investigate the similarities and differences in the usage of discourse markers such as because, so, and, etc. among the following three types of university students: native speakers of English (NS), non-native Chinese students (CNNS, mainland Chinese), and non-native Japanese students (JNNS). All the CNNS and JNNS have studied English as a foreign language for ...

Discourse markers, a group of pragmatic elements, are used widely in our daily communication. Among these markers, well is found to be the most frequently used one in conversation. Although much research has been carried out on its theoretical bases such as its definition, functions and categorizations, few studies have taken a multimodal approach in analyzing this marker. The aim of the presen...

This discussion note deals with the reformulation markers (RMs) that is, that is to say, in other words, namely, i.e. and viz. and the role they play in linguistic communication as described by Sperber and Wilson (1986/1995). According to Blakemore (1996), items such as that is (to say) and in other words are conceptual and non-truth conditional. This fact makes her conclude that classifying th...