A notorious challenge in the study of the diachrony of English is to determine whether developments in syntax, including changing frequencies of a particular construction, or word-order changes as suggested by perceived patterns in extant texts, represent genuine linguistic changes or are due to changes in conventions of writing. What is intuitively clear, however, even to a casual eye, is that a piece of English prose from, say, the 16th-century differs markedly from texts from the 18th-century. Yet such judgements cannot be based on syntactic changes alone, since essential grammatical features of Present-Day English are in place already by the end of the Late Middle English period. As a result, these differences are often simply ascribed to the notoriously elusive domain of style. The current study attempts to come to grips with the issue of period-specific conventions of writing by focusing on features of discourse structure and textual organisation as of the Early Modern English period. It can be positioned at the meso-level between large-scale quantitative approaches of sentence-level linguistic features and detailed, small-scale discourse-analytic studies of individual texts. Texts selected for the current purpose, manuals for equine care, derive from a sub-domain of instructional writing with a long history in the vernacular. As these texts share similar communicative purposes and deal with the same "global" topics of feeding and looking after a horse, any differences between them cannot be attributed to different genres or differences in subject matter. This permits us to zoom in on 'agnates', different ways of expressing the same meanings, and allows us to see how the stylistic options selected by authors achieve the various communicative goals that have to be negotiated, such as discourse coherence or the transition to new topics. The three main sections in this dissertation offer different ways to identifying developments in discourse organisation. The first section explores the traditional corpus-based approach that is frequently used to measure the parameter of "personal involvement", an indicator of periodic style. Initially, this approach restricts itself to measuring the contribution of frequencies of individual lexical items like first and second person pronouns. Next, this section will focus on the presence and linguistic realisation of the interlocutors of these instructional texts, i.e. the writer and the reader. The second main section will try to diagnose such varying styles by employing a completely data-driven, quantitative methodology which offers a linguistically unbiased and theory-independent perspective on the data in the corpus. This second approach offers cues as to how `subliminal' patterns of grammar may affect perceptions of style, and how quantitative measures may aid in assessing whether the texts in our corpus cluster in expected or unexpected ways. The third section draws on theories of referential coherence and textual progression. By charting the variation with which texts from different periods in the history of English apply conventions for discourse organisation, it offers an insight into developments of hierarchical discourse structures (i.e., coordinated versus subordinated discourse relations) and practices of co-reference. Taken together, these three independent measures offer a novel, multi-angled approach to stylistic developments in prose writing. Combining features `above the sentence' level which involve discourse and information structural changes, this dissertation affords a glimpse into the emergence of written textual conventions, or 'grammars of prose', in the history of English.

This work presents an analysis of two news reporting extracted from the magazine Veja. The magazine pictures negatively Venezuela s president Hugo Chávez. In the development of this work the following sources were used: the genre notion of Bakhtin (2000 [1925]), the functional grammar contributions of Halliday and Matthiessen (2004) and the modes of discourse organization of Charaudeau (2007, 2008). Considering the linguistic elements related to the modes, we used the prediction category of Tadros (1994) that develops the relationship between speaker and listener, and the projected sentences from the functional viewpoint. Since the media has great influence in mass behavior, this work aimed to understand in which ways this influence manifests itself through language. / Este trabalho apresenta uma análise de duas reportagens da revista Veja que representam negativamente o presidente Hugo Chávez da Venezuela. Para isso foi utilizada a noção de gênero em Bakhtin (2000 [1925]), as contribuições da gramática funcional de Halliday e Matthiessen (2004) e os modos de organização do discurso de Charaudeau (2007, 2008). Quanto aos elementos linguísticos relacionados aos modos, utilizamos as categorias de previsão de Tadros (1994), que desenvolvem a relação locutor-interlocutor, e as orações projetadas do ponto de vista funcional. Acreditando que os meios de comunicação são grandes responsáveis por um agir coletivo, buscamos compreender de que modo isso se efetua através da linguagem.

This thesis deals with the correlative markers d’une part… d’autre part, d’un côté… de l’autre and non seulement… mais in French and their Swedish counterparts dels… dels, å ena sidan… å andra sidan and inte bara… utan. These markers are composed of two separate parts generally occurring together, and announce a serial of at least two textual units to be considered together. The analyses of the use of these three French and three Swedish markers are based upon two corpora of non-academic humanities texts. The first, principal corpus, is composed only of original French and Swedish texts. The second, complementary corpus, is composed of source texts in the two languages and their translations in the other language. By the combination of these two corpora, this study is comparative as well as contrastive. Through application of the Geneva model of discourse analysis and the Rhetorical Structure Theory, a semantic and functional approach to correlative markers and their text-structural role is adopted. The study shows similarities as well as differences between the six markers, both within each language and between the languages. D’une part… d’autre part and dels… dels principally mark a conjunctive relation, whereas d’un côté… de l’autre and å ena sidan… å andra sidan more often are used in  a contrastive relation, even though they all can be used for both kinds of relations. Non seulement… mais and inte bara… utan mark a conjunctive relation, but can also indicate that the second argument is stronger than the first one. By the use of these two markers, the language users also present the first one as given and the second one as new information. In general, the French correlative markers appear to have a more argumentative function, whereas the text-structural function is demonstrated to be the most important in Swedish.

本論文藉由分析三十二位主修英語的研究生所寫的克漏字測驗以及引導寫作來探討其使用完成式的情形。文中的討論主要涵蓋了三個面向：語言形式和語意之間的連結，語法體(grammatical aspect)與情狀體(lexical aspect)之間的關聯，以及語法體與篇章組織(discourse organization)之間的關係。本篇研究發現，進階學習者能將完成式的語言形式正確使用，但是似乎仍未能達到高度的適當使用(appropriate use)。此外，研究發現學習者有使用完成式的動詞似乎偏向於其語意中帶有終點(endpoint)或結果狀態(result state)的類別，此項發現並支持之前文獻的研究結果。最後，結果亦顯示學習者在篇章中所使用的完成式似乎具有情景建立的功能(scene-setting function)，幫助他們在文章的開頭建立起背景。 / This study aims to explore the advanced learners’ use of the perfect aspect from the perspectives of form-meaning matching, lexical aspect influence and discourse organization influence. Thirty-two English-majored graduate students participated in the present study and they had to complete two tasks: a cloze test and a composition. With a careful examination over the collected data, these advanced learners’ use of the perfect aspect could be summarized as the following. First of all, they showed better formal accuracy than appropriate use of the perfect aspect. Although they presented more underuse in the task of cloze, they had more overuse in their compositions. Secondly, it was found that the perfect aspect was closely related to the verbs involving a semantic endpoint. These verbs, according to Vendler’s classification, are ACCOMPLISHMENTS and ACHIEVEMENTS. Finally, the learners in the present study showed a tendency of using the perfect aspect as the scene-setting function in the opening paragraph of their compositions.

La thèse porte sur le statut sémantico-pragmatique des propositions relatives appositives (PRA), étudié à travers l’examen du fonctionnement discursif des phrases complexes de la forme ‘Matrice, qui PRA’ du français. Dans beaucoup de langues, les PRA n’interagissent pas sémantiquement avec les opérateurs présents dans leurs propositions enchâssantes et tendent à s’interpréter pragmatiquement comme porteuses d’informations non-centrales ou secondaires pour la question en discussion (QUD) du discours en cours. Plusieurs analyses (Holler 2005, Arnold 2007, Koev 2012) dissocient ces deux propriétés en dérivant la projection des PRA de leur statut d’assertions indépendantes et en expliquant leur lecture pragmatique à l’aide de principes généraux de gestion du flot discursif. En effet, lorsque les PRA apparaissent en fin de phrase, elles sont susceptibles d’interagir avec la QUD tout en ayant une portée large vis-à-vis du reste de la phrase. Certains phénomènes discursifs semblent néanmoins contredire l’idée que les PRA constituent des assertions indépendantes. D’abord, les PRA peuvent interagir avec la QUD seulement si leurs matrices véhiculent également des informations pertinentes pour le sujet en discussion. Ensuite, contrairement à ce que l’on peut observer dans une séquence de deux propositions indépendantes, dans une séquence formée d’une proposition matrice et d’une PRA, quel que soit l’ordre de leur linéarisation, la matrice s’interprète toujours comme centrale pour le discours, alors que le statut pragmatique de la PRA dépend fortement du degré d’informativité du reste de la phrase vis-à-vis de la QUD. Enfin, les résultats de deux études comportementales conduites pour la thèse montrent que, suite au traitement de phrases complexes comme ‘Matrice, qui PRA’, les référents du type ‘individu’ mentionnés par la matrice restent hautement saillants pour le discours subséquent contrairement à ceux dont il est question dans la PRA, qui jouissent d’un degré d’accessibilité assez faible. Partant de ces données, nous concluons que la lecture pragmatique centrale des PRA n’est pas une conséquence de leur statut d’assertions indépendantes mais résulte de l’intégration de leur contenu dans le domaine focal de leurs matrices. Plus généralement, en nous appuyant sur les travaux d’Ander Bois & al. (2010) et Schlenker (2013, ms), nous défendons l’idée que le manque d’interaction entre les PRA et le reste de leurs phrases d’accueil ainsi que leur prédisposition à une interprétation non-centrale pour le discours proviennent du fait, qu’à la différence de leurs matrices, dont l’énonciation s’accompagne de l’introduction d’un référent propositionnel nouveau, les PRA sont des anaphores propositionnelles, dont la portée sémantique et l’interprétation pragmatique dépendent de la position discursive de l’expression important dans l’univers du discours le référent auquel s’applique le contenu qu’elles expriment. / The thesis focuses on the semantic-pragmatic status of appositive relative clauses (ARC). We address this question by examining discourse functioning of complex sentences of the form ‘Matrix, qui ARC’ in French. Crosslinguistically, ARC fail to interact semantically with scope taking operators contained in their embedding clauses and tend to be interpreted pragmatically as carrying non-central or secondary information for the question under discussion (QUD) in the ongoing discourse. Several analysis (Holler 2005, Arnold 2007, Koev 2012) dissociate these two properties, deriving the ARC projection from their status of independent assertions and explaining their pragmatic reading with independent principles of the discourse flow management. Indeed, when an ARC follows linearly its embedding clause, it can interact with the QUD while still receiving a wide scope relatively to the rest of the host sentence. Some discursive phenomena seem nevertheless contradict the idea that ARC constitute independent assertions. First, an ARC can interact with a QUD only if its matrix clause also conveys information relevant to the subject under discussion. Second, contrary to what we observe examining sequences of two independent clauses, in sequences formed of a matrix clause and an ARC, regardless of the order of their linearization, the matrix clause is always interpreted as being at-issue for the discourse, while the pragmatic status of the ARC depends to a great extent on the degree of informativeness of the rest of the sentence relatively to the QUD. And, third, the results of two psycholinguistic experiments conducted as part of this study show that after processing a sentence such as ‘Matrix, qui ARC’, the entity-type referents realized by the matrix clause are highly salient for the subsequent discourse unlike those realized by the ARC, which have a rather low accessibility degree. Based on these data, we conclude that at-issue pragmatic reading of ARC is not a consequence of their functioning as independent assertions but results from integration of their content into the focal domain of the embedding clause. More generally, building on the works of AnderBois & al. (2010) and Schlenker (2013, ms), we defend the idea that the lack of interaction between ARC and the host sentences as well as their tendency to receive a not at-issue reading in discourse arise from the fact that unlike their matrix clauses, whose utterance has the effect of introducing a new propositional referent, ARC are propositional anaphora, the semantic and pragmatic interpretation of which depends thus on the discourse position of their antecedent expression, importing into the discourse the propositional referent the ARC’s content applies to.