Grammar and Discourse

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter reviews the relationship between grammar and discourse in English from three different perspectives. First, it focuses on the challenges for grammatical analysis of looking beyond the sentence to the level of discourse. These include difficulties in delimiting grammatical units, in analysing ellipsis, and in accounting for the clause fragments found frequently in spoken interaction. The second perspective, that of the discourse analysis tradition, concerns how particular grammatical choices help to shape discourse so that different ideologies are suggested or different attitudes expressed. The discussion here focuses on choices in the areas of transitivity, nominalization, modality, and stance. From the third perspective, language use in discourse can be seen as shaping grammar: frequent patterns of use can result in grammatical changes and in the development of new functional resources through grammaticalization processes. This is illustrated with examples from both spoken and written discourse.