The emergence of texture: An analysis of the functions of the nominal demonstratives in an english interlanguage corpus

Abstract

This study uses the concept of "emergent texture" to analyze the corpus behavior of the four nominal demonstratives - this, that, these, and those - in an interlanguage corpus created at Yonsei University in the Fall of 1999. "Emergent texture" refers to the manner in which interlanguage texts gradually develop their use and control of the grammatical and semantic means used to establish textual cohesion. The study investigates a corpus of 109 single paragraphs created at Yonsei University in the Fall of 1999. The concept of markedness is emphasized as a way of mediating the debate over the issue of interlanguage development, linking this to the extensive description of inter-sentential cohesive relations in Halliday and Hasan's 1976 study, Cohesion in English. The investigation proper begins with the analysis of a single sample paragraph of low-level interlanguage taken from the corpus in order to establish a frame of reference for what follows. It then examines various aspects of interlanguage cohesion within the corpus as a whole, including reiteration, synonyms and near-synonyms, the behavior of the nominal group, and cataphoric reference. The paper concludes with a discussion of future research possibilities in the area of interlanguage cohesion.