An Inquiry into Connectives and Their Use in Written Discourse

Abstract

Problem Statement: To know a language means to be able to produce coherent verbal and written texts to convey one’s message to the addressee. Texture is a matter of meaning relations and this is what distinguishes a text from something that is not. The text should function as a unity with respect to its environment. An important aspect of discourse understanding and generation involves the recognition and processing of discourse relations and as such connective devices, also known as connectors, play a significant role in the formation and interpretation of the relations present in a text. Method: In the present study connectives both in Turkish and English have been analyzed in terms of their structural properties through the written works of two groups of students studying at Hacettepe University in Ankara. The analysis is based on the same principles as the Penn Discourse TreeBank, which lists connective devices into three categories as coordinating, subordinating conjunctions and sentence adverbials. So as to analyze the reasons behind the mistakes of the participants, a Grammaticality Judgement Test has been designed and implemented. Conclusion: The results indicate that there occurs L1 effect on both groups’ use of connectives in L2 regardless of their language backgrounds.