x Preface
ture of the word. Moutaouakil proposes a Generalized Parallelism Hy-
pothesis which entails that all products of linguistic activity, from text to
word, are to be seen as richly layered discourses, with the proviso that the
realization of the many layers is increasingly constrained as one descends
to ever smaller units.
The final reaction to Hengeveld’s proposal takes the form of a substan-
tial chapter by Dik Bakker, of the University of Amsterdam (Netherlands),
and Anna Siewierska, of the University of Lancaster (United Kingdom).
Unlike their colleagues, they concentrate on the expression level, imple-
menting proposals for an incremental, dynamic view of the morphosyntax
of utterances. They propose a formalism that works top-down, left-to-right
and depth-first and permits constrained inheritance and percolation. They
then return to a central issue of this book, the relation between grammar
and production, between pattern and process, arguing that FDG offers a
model of the speaker’s actual processes of production, and backing this up
with a detailed analysis of a few lines of transcribed speech.
This volume closes with an Epilogue by Kees Hengeveld, in which he
gives various responses to issues raised in the preceding chapters and then
refines the model originally proposed. This chapter can thus be read as rep-
resenting the current status quæstionis in FDG. Hengeveld begins by
identifying FDG as a pattern model: although the structures of languages
reflect the processes of communication, FDG does not model those proc-
esses. Yet he indicates his sympathy with dynamic implementations of the
model. He goes on to welcome the various contributions to clarification of
the cognitive and contextual components of the model and ends by offering
an expanded version of FDG.
The editors hope that this book will give a lively impression of the de-
bates currently being conducted about the architecture of FDG. As Anstey
says, now “FG could do with more engineers and builders”. The current
volume can be seen as a blueprint for the work of those labourers.
We hereby acknowledge the financial support provided by the Spanish
Ministry of Science and Technology (Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología,
MCYT), the European Regional Development Fund (Fondo Europeo de
Desarrollo Regional, FEDER), and the Xunta de Galicia (XUGA) under
project BFF2002-02441, PGIDIT03PXIC20403PN, entitled "Discourse
Analysis in English: Aspects of Cognition, Typology and Second Language
Acquisition/Análisis del discurso en lengua inglesa: Aspectos cognitivos,
contrastivos y de adquisición", and by the Netherlands Organization for
Scientific Research, for making it possible for Dr Gómez- González to visit
the Netherlands to work on the production of this book.