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6/30/2009

How language is structured, from top down

The lecture I am giving during the translation consultants' seminar is on "discourse genres" or "types/kinds of discourse" The kind of discourse genre you are engaged in producing determines how many of the surface-structures of the discourse will appear. The high-level choices determine the low-level choices.
The term "discourse genres" describes those major types of discourses that we use in speaking. These are universal, and may be described as "deep-structure" or as "notional". One of my lectures will be on the taxonomy of discourse genres. I am using the diagram shown in this post, which comes from Robert Longacre's The Grammar of Discourse, 2nd edition. Another lecture will deal more specifically with narrative discourse.
Bob was my MA supervisor in 1978-79 at the University of Texas at Arlington, where I got a MA in linguistics.

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