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Date Posted: 06:48:24 09/15/09 Tue
Author: Carolina Duarte
Subject: comments on Grammar ppp

It seems the main points of the text were all covered in the power point.

A few personal observations:

In my opinion this first quote, which was not included, is more meaningful than the other, about “welding clauses”…

'A discourse-oriented approach to grammar would suggest not only a greater emphasis on contexts..."

(Slide 5: Why ask “why”? There is no question posed.)

With regards to the examples of different possibilities one can choose when speaking – subject verb agreement - (ex: the gang “is” or “are” and examples of the use of sing. or plural pronouns,) – it all comes back to the same “argument”, doesn’t it: grammar is not context/discourse free.

It would be important to mention that from a “discourse point of view” “She gave him the car” or “She gave the car to him” (as well as the example about Edward and his reward) are non-equivalent.

On marked constructions: The terms we use to talk about language vary in this not-so-new perspective: from “determiner”, “wh-cleft” and “existential there” we’ll talk about “restating”, “summing up”, “continuing a topic” and so on – discourse functions, as they are called. Interesting…

The group concludes mentioning precisely this, which is the main point made throughout the text: one doesn’t learn grammar for its own sake, but rather to tell a story, write a text… in short, communicate somehow with someone… As you did with us, in your power point presentation, which very well sums up the content of a 23 page text!! Well done!!

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