Linguistics

SUMMARY CHAPTER 6 – PART 2.

Language: divided into the following for purposes of description and analysis:
→ Vocabulary
→ Morphology
→ Phonology
→ Syntax
→ Discourse

DISCOURSE (ways to connect sentences and organize information)
Cohesion: devices that link one element of discourse to another integrating them into a unified text. Devices that create cohesion:
→ Secuencial Indicators:linguistic elements that connect phrases, clauses, or longer units of written or spoken text to signal the order in which events take place, (in English they may be set with a coma or pause): First, Then, Next, Finally, before-after, yesterday-today-tomorrow.
→ Logical Connectors: occur between clauses or other grammatical constituents to indicate such relations between them as cause-effect(because, as a result, consequently), contrast (however, on the other hand) and addition of information (furthermore, moreover).
→ Pronominal and lexical reference
→ Substitution
→ Ellipsis
(SEE p.151, 6.7, Types of cohesion in English)

TYPES OF DISCOURSE → “GENRES”: >different functions within a language community
> involvingdifferent classes of participants (speaker/writer/audience)
Academic Genres ← > addressin different topics
include: > requiring different language style and organization
>research papers
>lectures
> bookreviews


Interpersonal Genres ←
include:
>conversation
>service encounters (ordering food in a restaurant)
>letters

GENRES → “CONVENTIONALIZED”
>elements shared by members of a language community as part of the cultural component of communicative competence.→ there are cultural differences in the organizational pattern in the academic genre.

Contrastive Rhetoric: area of research that compares → genre-specific conventions in different languages and cultures
→ particular focus on predicting and explainig problems in L2 academic andprofessional writing

Examples of conventional features L2 learners must acquire for interactional genres:
>Politeness: some acts may be perceived as “friendly” in one setting but “rude” in another.
>Turn-taking strategies for conversations: appropiate turn-taking in some cultures involves interruptions, overlaps, or simultaneous speaking.

Transfer of politeness and turn-taking conventionsfrom L1 to L2 can contribute to instances of serious misunderstanding of speaker intent and message tone.

The development of academic discourse competences requires reading and hearing an ample number of academic texts.

Receptive Activities: >reading
>listening → Successful SLA requires active engagement

→ BOTTOM-UP and TOP-DOWN PROCESSING: involvescomprehension of written or spoken language.

*BOTTOM-UP PROCESSING: requires prior knowledge of the language system (vocabulary, morphology, phonology, syntax and discourse structure) and interpretation of physical cues (graphic and auditory).
>Vocabulary: to understand words
>Morphology: to interpret complex lexical elements, and to perceive grammatical information carried by inflections.>Phonology: to recognize spoken words, to segment speech into grammatical units, and to relate written symbols to their spoken form.
>Syntax: to recognize how words relate to one another
>Discourse Structure: to interpret stretches of language that are longer than a simple sentence.

At early stages, Bottom-up processing is limited to visual or auditory recognition of the limited set of...