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The main aim of the thesis is to investigate how discourse entities are linked with topic chaining and discourse coherence by showing that the choice and the distribution of referring expressions is correlated with the center transition patterns in the centering framework. The thesis provides an integrated interpretation in understanding the behaviour of referring expressions in discourse by considering the relation between referential choice and the local and global coherence of discourse. The thesis has three stages: (1) to provide a semantic and pragmatic perspective in a contrastive study of referring expressions in English and Japanese spontaneous dialogues, (2) to analyse the way anaphoric and deictic expressions can contribute to discourse organisation in structuring and focusing the specific discourse segment, and (3) to investigate the choice and the distribution of referring expressions in the Map Task Corpus and to clarify the way the participants collaborate to judge the most salient entity in the current discourse against their common ground. Significantly, despite the grammatical differences in the form of reference between the two languages, the ways of discourse development in both data sets show distinctive similarities in the process by which the topic entities are introduced, established, and shifted away to the subsequent topic entities. Comparing and contrasting the choice and the distribution of referring expressions of the four different transition patterns of centers, the crucial factors of their correspondent relations between English and Japanese referring expressions are shown in the findings that the topic chains of noun phrases are constructed and are treated like proper names in discourse. This can suggest that full noun phrases play a major role when the topic entity is established in the course of discourse. Since the existing centering model cannot handle the topic chain of noun phrases in the anaphoric relations in terms of the local focus of discourse, centering must be integrated with a model of global focus to account for both pronouns and full noun phrases that can be used for continuations across segment boundaries. Based on Walker’s cache model, I argue that the forms of anaphors are not always shorter, and the focus of attention is maintained by the chain of noun phrases rather than by (zero) pronouns both within a discourse segment and over discourse segment boundaries. These processes are predicted and likely to underlie other uses of language as well. The result can modify the existing perspectives that the focus of attention is normally represented by attenuated forms of reference, and full noun phrases always show focus-shift. In addition, necessary extension to the global coherence of discourse can link these anaphoric relations with the deictic expressions over discourse segment boundaries. Finally, I argue that the choice and the distribution of referring expressions in the Map Task Corpus depends on the way the participants collaborate to judge the most salient entity in the current discourse against their common ground.

The English suffix -s is usually used to mark third person singular present tense, noun plurals, possessives, and in some adverbs, but it is also used in words like news, linguistics, measles, billiards, belongings, riches, oats, shivers, scissors, etc. In the literature so far, words like these have been studied mainly from the diachronic perspective, according to their morphological features and within the realm of count and mass nouns, and the suffix -s has been called a plural marker, possessive marker, pseudo-morpheme, or nominalizer. But these functions identified for the English suffix -s can't successfully explain usages of the suffix -s in all the non-plural English nouns, especially those that are not abstract nouns.In this dissertation a survey on the use of English non-plural nouns in -s is conducted with middle school students, college freshmen, college seniors, college professors and staff members as subjects using six different grammatical tests. It is found that the High School group and Staff Members always stand out as different from College Students and Professors suggesting that education level or the heterogeneousness of education levels does play a role in affecting the subjects' use of the English non-plural nouns in -s. In the survey, the subjects' performance in different types of tests is statistically different indicating that different kinds of tests affect the subjects' performance and grammaticality judgment differently.The FROWN-based study shows that most of these English non-plural nouns in -s are not used very frequently in contemporary American English, revealing that most of the English reference grammars are using obsolete or historical examples. The corpus-based study also tells us that most of the cases of these English non-plural nouns in -s are in non-subject positions, making it harder for us to test the number status of these words. But this large number of non-subject cases just means that we can't tell whether these words are intrinsically plural or singular and in fact except for only a few clearly marked plural cases there is a strong tendency towards generic interpretations for these non-plural nouns in -s. Actually it is this in-determinateness that makes the appearance of the new morpheme or new functions of old morphemes possible.The data from the Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Ed, Online (OED), supports Stahlke, Cheng & Sung's (forthcoming) argument that in the late 16th and early 17th century a new morpheme--the nominalizer -s, was developed in the English language to turn adjectives and concrete nouns into abstract nouns. The data on the historical semantic development of English non-plural nouns in -s from the OED also reveals the process of a semantic shift of Adj. -+ Sing. N -+ Pl. N -+ Col. N - Gen. N. This process of semantic shift is strongly evidenced by the disappearance of singular forms of the English non-plural nouns -s in the late 16th and early 17th century and successfully explains why the English nouns in -s have the generic interpretation and require singular verb agreement. / Department of English

The purpose of the present study was to investigate Korean EFL learners' judgments of countability of English nouns because a correct judgment of noun countability is a key factor for the appropriate use of English indefinite articles and noun phrases. To investigate the subjects' judgments of noun countability and how they are related to the use of English indefinite articles and noun phrases, fourteen hypotheses were set forth and four task types were designed.Participants were 115 Korean college EFL students and they were given four tasks: a task of judgment of countability of nouns in isolation OCT), a task of judgment of countability of nouns in context (JCC), a fill-in-the-blank task (FB), and an error correction task (EC).Overall the subjects showed a flexible notion of countability. There was a statistically significant difference between their performance of JCI and JCC. There was a positive relation between their judgments of countability in three contexts (isolation, context, and overall context) and their performance on the indefinite articles in FB.There was no relationship between their performance of JCC and OJC (overall judgment of countability) and the indefinite articles in EC.With respect to JCI, a statistically significant difference was found between the performance of the low and advanced learners and between the performance of the intermediate and advanced learners, but it was not found between the performance of the low and intermediate learners.In regard to JCC, no statistically significant difference was found between the performance of the low and intermediate learners and between the performance of the intermediate and advanced learners. A statistically significant difference was found only between the performance of the low and advanced learners.The participants performed better on the count use of concrete nouns than on the noncount use of concrete nouns, whereas they performed better on the noncount use of abstract nouns than on the count use of abstract nouns.There was an interaction between proficiency and the noncount use of concrete nouns, while no interaction was found between proficiency and the count use of abstract nouns. / Department of English

Typescript (photocopy) / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1980. / Bibliography: leaves 263-269. / Microfiche. / xvi, 269 leaves, bound ill. 28 cm

published_or_final_version / English Studies / Master / Master of Arts