a in French, the negative of the verb is formed with the discontinuous
constituent ne... pas as in:
Paul ne mange pas beaucoup.
“Paul doesn’t eat much.”
b in English, the phrasal verb pick upin
The player picked the ball up.
is a discontinuous constituent.discourse n
a general term for examples of language use, i.e. language which has been
produced as the result of an act of communication.
Whereas grammar refers to the rules a language uses to form grammatical
units such as clause, phrase, and sentence, discourse normally refers to
larger units of language such as paragraphs, conversations, and interviews.
Sometimes the study of both written and spoken discourse is known as
discourse analysis; some researchers however use discourse analysis to
refer to the study of spoken discourse and text linguisticsto refer to the
study of written discourse.
In postmodernismand critical discourse analysis, discourse is used
to indicate not only any kind of talk but also the meanings and values
embedded in talk. In this sense, a dominant discourserefers to an institu-
tionalized way of thinking and talking about things.
discourse accent n
(in writing) those characteristics of writing produced by non-native writers
which make it different from the writing of native writers. For example,
non-native patterns of rhetorical organization in an essay or non-native use
of cohesive devices, topics, and paragraph organization may contribute to
a writer’s discourse accent.
see also contrastive rhetoric
discourse analysis n
the study of how sentences in spoken and written language form larger
meaningful units such as paragraphs, conversations, interviews, etc. (see
discourse).
For example, discourse analysis deals with:
a how the choice of articles, pronouns, and tenses affects the structure of
the discourse (see address forms, cohesion)
b the relationship between utterances in a discourse (see adjacency pairs,
coherence)
c the movesmade by speakers to introduce a new topic, change the topic,
or assert a higher role relationshipto the other participants
discourse