Acts and The Relationship Between Discou PDF

Acts and the relationship between discourse
and grammar*
Mike Hannay and Caroline Kroon

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
amsterdamnld/12 IP: 146.50.116.76 On: Fri, 04 Aug 2017 13:35:54
In modelling the discourse–grammar interface, a central question concerns

the status of discourse act as the minimal unit of discourse organization and
its relation to units of grammatical structure. This paper seeks to clarify the
notion of act by defining it as a strategic rather than a conceptual unit, and
by setting out a classification of strategic acts. Illustration is then offered for
the position that discourse acts are to a very considerable extent realized in
English by intonation units and punctuation units. This is done by consider-
ing how punctuational variation and cases of intonation/syntax mismatch
can be explained in terms of the specific discourse contribution of the units
concerned. Although the correlation between discourse acts and intonation/
punctuation units remains problematic, in that there may not be a 1 : 1 cor-
respondence, it is still attractive — at least for English — to see the linguistic
correlate of acts in intonation and punctuation units rather than in syntactic
structures. The paper finishes by considering the implications for the formal-
izing of relations between discourse, semantics and syntax in Functional
Discourse Grammar.
. Introduction
A current trend in linguistics involves attempts to link discourse models to

sentence models, or the other way round. The discourse–grammar interface
is one of the central issues in, for instance, Roulet’s Geneva Discourse Model
(henceforth GDM) (for the most recent and most encompassing overview
see Roulet, Filliettaz and Grobet 2001) and Hengeveld’s Functional Discourse
Grammar (FDG) (Hengeveld 2004a, 2004b). In their individual endeavours
both models encounter the same kinds of problem. One of the most essential,
and most difficult, questions raised is how the minimal unit of discourse or-
ganization relates to the maximal unit of grammatical structure. Both models
Functions of Language 12:1 (2005), 87–24.

issn 0929–998X / e-issn 1569–9765 © John Benjamins Publishing Company
88 Mike Hannay and Caroline Kroon
assume that the concept of act (roughly in the sense of Sinclair & Coulthard
1975, 1992; also called discourse act) plays a central role in capturing the re-
lationship between syntax and discourse. So far, however, this concept has in
various respects remained problematic.
In this article we undertake to shed more light on the concept of act and
its status in an integrated model of discourse, concentrating by way of illustra-
tion on the model of FDG. Crucial in this respect is an understanding of the
relationship between discourse units, semantico-syntactic units, and prosodic
or orthographic units. Cases where the three types of unit are coextensive may
be prototypical, but it is by no means the case that the discourse steps which
speakers take are translated automatically into semantico-syntactic units

which in their turn are realized as prosodic or orthographic units. Rather, there
is substantial evidence that the relations between the different levels may be
more complex. For instance, Halliday (21994: 296) notes the need to define the
information unit as a constituent in its own right, since one information unit
may cover a clause and a half and one clause may be mapped into two or more
information units (see also Selting 1996, Simon 2001, and Verhagen 2001 for
comparable observations). Accordingly, a more general and further-reaching
aim of this article is to establish a firmer grip on the relation between grammar
and discourse, and on the feasibility of an integrated grammar of discourse.
The article is structured as follows. Section 2 presents a brief overview of
FDG, focusing on the status of acts and their role in the wider model. In Sec-
tion 3, we introduce a number of specific act-related problems with which the
model appears to be confronted. Our discussion leads us to conclude that a
more sophisticated definition of act is needed, which among other things spec-
ifies how this unit of discourse structure corresponds to units of other types
of structure (e.g. the semantico-syntactic structure). Section 4 tentatively ex-
plores these possible correspondences, and introduces, within this context, the
fundamental distinction between conceptual units and strategic units. On the
basis of this exploration it is hypothesized that the minimal units of discourse
distinguished as strategic acts coincide much more clearly with prosodic (or
orthographic) units than with semantico-syntactic units. This hypothesis is
developed in Sections 5 and 6. Finally, Section 7 considers some implications
of our approach to discourse acts for the further elaboration of Functional
Discourse Grammar.
Acts and the relationship between discourse and grammar 89
2. Functional Discourse Grammar
2. General outline of the model
Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) is a recent development of the Func-

tional Grammar developed by Simon Dik (1978, 1997), but in many aspects of
its architecture it represents a significant break from the standard Functional
Grammar model. The basic model of FDG is set out in Hengeveld (2004a,
2004b) and discussed in other contributions in Mackenzie & Gómez-González
(2004). FDG constitutes the grammatical component of a wider model of ver-
bal interaction. Earlier versions of Functional Grammar entertained the same

ambition, but with the notable exception of work by Nuyts (1983, 1992), little
was done to see what was essentially a sentence grammar in its broader per-
spective, and the final chapter of Dik (1997b) provides only a sketch of what
this might involve. At the same time researchers working in FG came increas-
ingly to realize that the architecture of the model presented in Dik (1997a,b)
did not permit adequate analysis of grammatical phenomena that extend be-
yond individual sentences (cf. contributions to Hannay & Bolkestein 1998) and
of utterances which are non-sentential and indeed holophrastic in structure
(cf. Mackenzie 1998).
The model presented by Hengeveld (2004a, 2004b) has four components:
alongside the grammatical component there is a contextual component, a con-
ceptual component and an acoustic component. The contextual component
provides the discourse domain within which utterances are produced, the con-
ceptual component models the development of the speaker’s communicative
intentions, and finally the acoustic component contains a set of articulation
rules which take information from various levels of the grammatical compo-
nent and produce actual acoustic, signed or orthographic linguistic expres-
sions. A general outline of the model is given in Figure 1.
The grammatical account of linguistic expressions can be viewed as the
result of decisions taken by the speaker on a top-down path from intention to
expression. The communicative intention is developed in the conceptual com-
ponent, the basic assumption being that each intention takes the form of a
move (‘move’ in the sense of Sinclair & Coulthard 1975). The conceptual com-
ponent then feeds the formulator in the grammatical component which drives
the construction of two levels of representation, the interpersonal level and the
representational level. The former contains information relevant to rhetorical
and pragmatic aspects of the linguistic expression concerned, reflecting what
the speaker does, while the latter takes care of semantic aspects, reflecting what
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Figure . An expanded version of FDG (Hengeveld 2004b: 376)
the speaker means. The resulting representation is then morpho-syntactically

encoded with the aid of a set of syntactic templates, operators and grammatical
morphemes. The output is the underlying structural level of description of the
linguistic expression concerned. This output is then passed on to the phono-
logical/orthographic level, which prepares the material for the acoustic com-
ponent of the model, which deals with the actual production of the relevant
utterance. The top-down path is summarized in Figure 2.
Acts and the relationship between discourse and grammar 9
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Figure 2. The top-down path from intention to expression
Although inspired by Levelt’s (1989) view of language production, Hen-

geveld (2004b: 366) stresses that the top-down approach does not make the
model into a production model of the communication process. It is a pattern
model rather than a process model, and seeks to account for the structure of
linguistic expressions as they reflect the communicative intentions with which
they are produced.
2.2 The interpersonal level of the grammatical module of FDG
To consider the role of acts in the model of FDG we need to look more closely
at the interpersonal level within the grammatical module. Here, FDG has been
inspired considerably by the first version of the Geneva Discourse Model as
presented in Roulet et al. 1985 (cf. Kroon 1995 and 1998 for proposals to com-
bine insights from both models), which focused on the description of the units
of discourse and the relations between these units, as well as on the linguistic
expression of these relationships by means of connective elements. Following
Sinclair & Coulthard (1975), GDM postulated a hierarchical discourse struc-
ture composed of units at five levels, the most important of which are called
acte (act), intervention (move), and échange (exchange).
According to this first version of GDM each communicative exchange can
be analysed as involving at least two moves (an initial and a reactive move),
which maintain an interactional (or illocutionary) relation with each other
(e.g. request, invitation, warning, response, confirmation). The constitutive
moves of an exchange need not all be expressed explicitly: in monological dis-
course the moves of the implied addressee have only a virtual status, which
basic assumption enables the model to account for both dialogical and mono-
logical discourse. Individual moves consist of at least a so-called ‘central’ act,
possibly accompanied by exchanges, moves and other acts which are subor-
dinated to the main act, and which are labelled ‘subsidiary’. The constituent
units of a complex move are related to one another by ‘rhetorical’ relations
(e.g. preparation, elaboration, counterargument, reformulation). Example (1)
serves as an illustration:
(1) A: I’ve got an extra ticket for the Santa Fe Chamber Orchestra tonight.
Are you interested?
B: Of course!
The move of speaker A consists of two acts (a subsidiary and a central act,
respectively) which are connected by a rhetorical relation called ‘preparation’.
The combination of both acts results in a higher-rank unit called move. This
move has the interactional (or illocutionary) function of ‘invitation’, and as
such forms the constitutive unit of an exchange in which it maintains an in-
teractional relation with a reactive move by speaker B. A GDM analysis of the
hierarchical and relational structure of this relatively simple piece of discourse
may be visualized as in Figures 3 and 4.
Returning to the interpersonal level of the grammatical component of
FDG, we see that, much in the same way as in GDM, one or more acts are
distinguished relating to the planned move, act being defined following Kroon
(1995: 65) as the smallest identifiable unit of communicative behaviour. An act
structure consists of an abstract illocutionary frame (A) which contains the
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Figure 3. Hierarchical organization
Speaker A: moveinvitation ((act1)preparation (act2))

↓ ↓
interactional rhetorical
function function
Speaker B: moveconfirmation (act)
Figure 4. Relational organization

discourse participants (P) and the communicated content (C). The content in
turn involves subacts of reference (R) and ascription (T). Hengeveld (2004b:
367) gives the following interpersonal structure for the house collapsed, where
DECL is the illocutionary abstract predicate for declarative, and where ‘Sp’
stands for the speaker and ‘Addr’ for the addressee.
(2) The house collapsed.
(3) (A1: [DECL (P1)Sp (P2)Addr (C1: [(T1: collapsed (T1)) (R1: house (R1))]
(C1))] (A1))
The first thing to note is that the illocutionary predicate relates to illocution
as it is encoded in the linguistic expression. The choice of a declarative struc-

ture may be a translation of various different communicative intentions in il-
locutionary terms, but the intention itself is accounted for in the conceptual
component. An important point, to which we will return below, is that in FDG
every act can be described in terms of its illocution.
In the 1997 model of FG, structures relating to the interpersonal level and
the structural level were related to each other in a rather confusing fashion, in
that the speech act (the precursor to the discourse act) was described in terms
of clausality. In FDG this problem is resolved, since discourse acts can also be
realized by a variety of non-clausal structures. For instance, the underlying
representations at the interpersonal level and representational level for the an-
swer to the question in (4) are (5a–b):
(4) A What does Newcastle need?
B A new defence.
(5) a. (A1: [DECL (P1)Sp (P2)Addr (C1: [(R1: a new defence (R1))] (C1))]
(A1))
b. (ix1: defence: (f1: new (f1)) (x1))
In (5b) ‘x’ stands for an individual, and ‘f ’ for a property; there is no state of
affairs or proposition involved. Other types of non-clausal expression, such as
the holophrastic exclamations Damn! and Ouch!, can be handled by assuming
an interpersonal level but no representational structure: the lexemes needed
can be chosen directly and no semantic structures have to be built.
What remains a potential problem in FDG is that discourse acts are essen-
tially associated with an illocution, whereas it is arguably the case that speak-
ers perform distinct discourse acts which cannot easily be associated with an
illocutionary force (cf. Steen, in press). This is a crucial point, for if linguistic
expressions are to be analysed in FDG as consisting of acts as basic units of
discourse, then it is imperative that we can identify what counts as an act and
what does not. Only then is it possible to consider correspondences — and the
lack of them — with other units of language, and to look for explanations for
such correspondences and non-correspondences. We therefore need a better
definition of act than has hitherto been formulated.
3. What is a discourse act? Some preliminary problems
The basic definition of act as used in FDG is similar to how the same notion
figures in the work of the Birmingham School (cf. Sinclair & Coulthard 1975,
1992) and early versions of the Geneva Discourse Model (cf. Roulet 1985). In
both GDM and FDG, acts are characterized further as maintaining specific rhe-
torical relationships with other discourse units. In the latest version of GDM,
in which the initial model has been reshaped into a more encompassing and
sophisticated framework (cf. Roulet 1997; Roulet et al. 2001), a cognitive ele-
ment is added to this description in that acts are taken to be the successive new
steps in a progressively developing discourse memory: each single discourse
act involves a separate registration in discourse memory (Roulet 2001: 64–5)
and constitutes, so to speak, an ‘update’ of that memory (cf. also Steen in press,
who stresses the ‘maintenance, monitoring and updating of mental representa-
tions of discourse’ as important interactional features of discourse acts).
Most approaches appear to assume that acts at least typically correspond
to grammatical clauses provided with an illocutionary force and referring to an
independent state of affairs. Although it is recognized that acts are not always
realized by clausal structures, as in (4) above, it is by no means clear under what
circumstances a particular structure does count as realizing a discourse act. In
GDM and FDG, the identification of acts (and the related issue of the proper
definition of the concept) thus remains a core issue. This section discusses two
specific problems concerning discourse acts and the nature of illocution.
3. Speech acts and discourse acts: How many communicative steps
within one speech act?
A first problem pertains to the issue of clause combining, more specifically to the
number of acts to be distinguished within one clause complex. Consider the fol-
lowing two examples, which illustrate two different types of clause combining:
(6) Watch out, because there’s a bull in the field.
(7) When you arrive, I am leaving.
Within the layered clause model of Functional Grammar, the difference be-
tween the constructions in (6) and (7) is described and explained in terms
of the layer within which combining takes place: at the level of the clause in
(6), but at the level of the predication in (7) (cf. Hengeveld 1989: 154). Conse-
quently, (6) involves two different speech acts, each with its own illocutionary
force, but (7) does not. In an approach in which discourse acts are taken to
equal speech acts in a Searlean sense, example (6) will therefore commonly be
considered to contain two discourse acts, example (7) as containing only one
discourse act. However, such an analysis is inconsistent with the definition of
discourse act which we prefer to employ (and which also seems to be implicitly
adhered to within the framework of FDG), namely act in the sense of separate
communicative step, that is, each single step which language producers take in
order to achieve their communicative aims. Within such a view it might well be
argued that the syntactic unit in (7) contains two acts.
This becomes clearer if we look at the difference between restrictive and
non-restrictive adverbial clauses when used following the main clause, as ex-
emplified in the italicized part of (8a) and (8b) (on restrictive vs non-restrictive
adverbials see Quirk et al. 1985: 1076). Whereas from a FG syntactic viewpoint
the constructions might be said to be identical (in terms of the layered clause
model of Functional Grammar the combining of the clauses in both (8a) and
(8b) would be represented at the predicational level), in discourse terms and
in information structure terms there is a clear difference which, in our view,
needs to be taken into account as well.
(8) a. A Viana really profited from coming to the North East.
B Oh, but Hugo Viana was an excellent player even before he
moved to Newcastle.
b. A Do you remember Hugo Viana?
B Oh yes. Hugo Viana was an excellent player, even before he
moved to Newcastle.
Following the initial ‘oh’ in (8a), the speaker’s message consists of one single
step, namely a counter to the suggestion that the footballer in question only
came good after becoming a Newcastle player: syntactic unit (the clause com-
plex) and discourse unit (act) coincide. In the second sentence of (8b), by con-
trast, both the main clause and the adverbial clause constitute communicative
steps in their own right, as is suggested by the presentation of the clause even
before he moved to Newcastle, as a kind of afterthought, as a separate punc-
tuation unit. We might also say that the syntactic unit in (8b) contains two
separate acts, which maintain a particular textual (or rhetorical) relation which
is lacking in example (8a).
Summarizing the discussion of the examples in (6)–(8) we can conclude
(i) that the unit that is traditionally called speech act may contain more than
one discourse act; and (ii) that there is reason to assume that syntactic struc-
ture and discourse structure are separate forms of organization which call for
separate analyses.
3.2 Acts and illocution

The discussion so far has suggested that what are seen as singular illocution-
ary and syntactic spans may contain more than one discourse unit. A second
issue relates to other cases where the same analysis has already been suggest-
ed, but where we feel the proposals are in fact problematic. As stated earlier,
most approaches tacitly assume that acts are characterized by, among other
things, a particular illocutionary force. Within the framework of GDM, Roulet
(1997: 133) however notes that the “act […] should not be confused with the
traditional speech act, as it does not necessarily have an illocutionary function
and need not coincide with a clause” (our emphasis, MH, CK). An important
reason for doing away with illocutionary force as an essential defining feature
of the discourse act is the analysis GDM prefers to provide for sentences like
(9), which over the years has been discussed by a number of Geneva School
researchers (e.g. Rossari 1996 and Roulet et al. 2001: 64, following Rubattel
1987).
(9) Pierre est sorti malgré la pluie.
‘Pierre has gone out despite the rain’
This sentence is said to contain two acts rather than one, since malgré la plu-
ie, despite being just a prepositional phrase, involves the same textual (in our
terms rhetorical) relation as in the concessive clause in (10):
(10) Pierre est sorti bien qu’il pleuve.
‘Pierre has gone out although it is raining’
However, under the reading given here in (9), in which the prepositional phrase
malgré la pluie is in focus, we would argue that the language producer is per-
forming just one act. If, on the other hand, the prepositional phrase were to be
presented as a separate intonation unit or as a separate punctuation unit, then
we would argue that two acts are being performed: first the addressee is told
that Pierre left, and then, as a further elaboration, that it was despite the rain. It
should be noted that a similar line to ours is taken by Auchlin & Ferrari (1994)
in their discussion of the same sentence. Rather than proposing a faulty analy-
sis, Geneva School researchers like Rossari and Roulet may, we suspect, have a
different kind of act in mind, and we will return to this in Sections 4 and 5.
Our own reason for rejecting illocutionary force as a defining feature of
the concept of act is the observation that discourses, in addition to a number
of ‘illocutionary acts’, usually contain a number of units which defy a descrip-
tion in terms of illocutionary force, but which still may count as separate acts
in their own right. Examples are vocatives like John! and discourse markers like
however. Consider (11), from Chafe (1988a: 22), where anyway in segment (c) is
spoken as a separate intonation unit.
(11) a. … it’s just about going away now,
b. … I had it about two weeks.
c. … anyway,
d. … so I was sort of nervous about that,
e. … for a day or two,
Chafe describes such intonation units in terms of the speaker “focusing for a
moment entirely on the linkage”. This suggests that the connective should not
be analysed as just a ‘marker’ of a rhetorical relation between two acts, but
might be seen as a discourse management act in its own right.
A similar case is the French example discussed by Auchlin & Ferrari (1994:
208) with donc:
(12) Marie est une fille intelligente. Donc.
‘Marie is an intelligent girl. So there.’
Auchlin & Ferrari note that the lexical meaning of donc is such that the word
will not normally be used to perform a separate act. Here, however, there is a
conflict between the lexical signal and prosodic signal, with prosody winning
out. The use of donc here is paraphrased as “this is what I think”: its effect
is to invite the addressee to re-interpret the previous statement as a conclu-
sion. For us, this again means that there is talk of an independent discourse
management act.
A final interesting case comes from Alexei Sayle’s first collection of short
stories:
(13) Eighteen months of no work and clinical depression next before a
commission to pen a script for a medium-budget British film. I wrote a
script that was my best work so far. The producers loved the script, the
money people came on board smooth as pie, a star attached their name,
the film was a go go.
Then.
The producer, who’d just had a big hit by accident, tried to get clever.
He didn’t want a tough director to stand up to him so he hired a woman
who had only ever directed a twenty-nine minute short for BBC Wales
who he thought could be pushed around, but who turned out to be both
stubborn and stupid. She shot whole scenes — and this was a comedy
remember — focused solely on a tin of peas. (Alexei Sayle (2000),
Barcelona Plates. London: Hodder and Stoughton, p. 26.)
In this case then is given paragraph status to create a clear effect, functioning
as a transition between the positive events of the previous paragraph and the
negative events to come. Just as in (11), the writer focuses on the transition
itself, and by so doing appears to perform an act which rather than moving the
discourse on, prepares the reader for the next step or steps. A particular ques-
tion here is whether then should be analysed as belonging to the clause which
starts off the following paragraph, or whether it should be seen as generated
independently. We will return to this issue briefly in Section 7.
In short, it appears that language users make different kinds of indepen-
dent contributions to the discourse which it seems appealing to analyse as acts
but which clearly lack illocutionary force, as in (11–13). Researchers working
in a GDM or FG framework generally deny act status to such contributions
(with the notable exception of Auchlin and Ferrari 1994), their argumentation
being not only that the elements involved have no illocutionary force, but also
that they do not maintain a rhetorical relationship with surrounding units, and
(an argument specific for GDM) that they do not play a role in ‘updating’ the
discourse memory.
This brief presentation of some of the problems encountered in the use
of the concept of act suggests that greater consideration has to be given to the
following questions: how can we capture more precisely the discourse steps
which language producers wish to take to achieve their communicative aims,
and specifically what different kinds of act do we need to recognize within such
an undertaking? We will address the latter issue systematically in Section 5. As
to the first question our preliminary answer would be to abandon the view that
discourse units typically correspond to syntactic units, and to take the cor-
respondence between discourse units and prosodic/orthographic units more
seriously. Note that their restricted interpretation of the concept of act more
or less forces the Geneva school researchers to discard intonation/punctua-

tion as an essential factor in the identification of acts: in their view a separate
intonation/punctuation unit like Donc in example (12) above does not seem to
correspond to an independent discourse act.
In order to test the viability of our proposed approach, we will now look
more closely at cases where these discourse steps appear not to be coextensive
with syntactic units.
4. Structural matches and structural mismatches: Towards a new

definition of act
4. Structural mismatches between discourse and syntax
Let us start our exploration of the correlation between units of discourse struc-
ture and units of syntactic structure with the following set of examples from
Simon (2001: 108), in a paper in which she challenges the standard GDM anal-
ysis of constructions like (8b) (to be found in e.g. Berrendonner (1990) and
Roulet et al. (2001)):
(14) a. Je n’ai pas entendu parler de ce film.
‘I have not heard of this film’
b. De ce film, je n’ai pas entendu parler.
‘Of this film I have not heard’
c. Ce film, je n’en ai pas entendu parler.
‘This film, I have not heard of it’
Within the Geneva framework, (14a) and (14b) display a more or less fully
identical structure from a semantico-syntactic point of view. In both examples
the constituent de ce film is grammatically integrated in the structure set up by
the predicate parler, the only difference being its position. If we were to assume
that discourse units are coextensive with (and identifiable by means of) syntac-
tic units, then (14a) and (14b) would both count as expressing one discourse
act. In (14c), by contrast, the element ce film is not syntactically integrated in
the following clause, which means that the example can be analysed as consist-
ing of two acts.
However, such an analysis poses various problems. For one thing, it fails
to account for the fact that, despite their identical syntactic analysis, (14b) dif-
fers considerably from (14a) from a discourse point of view, a difference which
gets expressed in (14b) not only by the fronting of the constituent de ce film,
00 Mike Hannay and Caroline Kroon
but also by splitting up the construction into two punctuation units, which
in our view is indicative of a presentation of the information in two separate
steps or acts. The constituent de ce film is syntactically dependent, but appears
to be textually autonomous, that is to say it constitutes a subordinate act, argu-
ably maintaining a relation of Topicalization or Orientation with regard to the
central act.
Thus, what we mean to say here is that the construction in (14b) may be
segmented differently according to whether one applies a syntactic or a dis-
course analysis. Although in many cases the discourse unit act indeed seems to
correspond to a syntactic unit (as is the case in (14a) and (14c)), there is also a
group of constructions where there is no such correspondence (or where this

correspondence is less clear), as in (14b). In (14b) the discourse structure for
certain communicative reasons ‘breaks open’ the grammatical structure of the
clause and violates its syntactic integrity, so to speak.
The segmentation problem may be illustrated further by the spoken se-
quence in (15) (where # indicates a clear prosodic boundary) and the written
sequence in (16):
(15) Last year I was robbed # by a six year old.
(16) He killed his wife. With a knife.
One way of approaching these constructions is to argue that they consist of

one grammatical clause (cf. Ford et al. 2002), although this clearly depends
on a particular view of the status of the term clause (for a brief discussion, see
Section 7 below). Be that as it may, without any doubt we are dealing with two
acts, which will be registered in Discourse Memory as two separate units. Note
that the analysis of the discourse structure of (15) and (16) depends exclusively
on the prosodic or orthographic information.
Examples (14b), (15) and (16) all appear to suggest that there is no iso-
morphic relation between syntax and discourse organization. At the same time
there are indications that the structure in the textual domain (and hence the
segmentation into acts) may be reflected more strongly in the prosodic or or-
thographic structure rather than in the syntactic structure. Let us consider this
view more closely (see also Auchlin & Ferrari 1994 and Simon 2001 for a simi-
lar approach).
Acts and the relationship between discourse and grammar 0
4.2 Prosodic/orthographic structure and its relation to syntax and

discourse
First of all it might indeed appear that syntax imposes certain constraints on
prosody and punctuation: for instance, one might imagine a principle of syn-
tactic integrity which disallows single prosodic or orthographic boundaries
within a syntactic unit. Consider examples (17–19):
(17) ?? He # hesitated.
(18) ?? We would not wish to belabour, the point.
(19) ? The right of the people to bring and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
(Nunberg et al., 2002: 1744)
One might struggle to interpret the communicative import of the isolated he

in (17), particularly if it is unstressed. And there is a sense in which (18) is
incomplete and uninformative until the object is supplied: even in context, it
is difficult to imagine someone belabouring, without specifying what is be-
laboured. Finally, Nunberg et al. (2002: 1744) note that there is “normally a
strong prohibition on punctuation separating subject and verb”, and mark (19)
as “now completely inadmissible”.
Conversely, prosody and punctuation are considered necessary to disam-
biguate syntactically ambiguous structures (cf. Nunberg et al. 2002: 1730). In
(20), a prosodic break or a comma is needed after paint.
(20) ? If they want to paint these lovely children, who really have marvellous
powers of imagination, should be given all the support they need.
Nevertheless, while the principle of syntactic integrity in the written mode

may appear relatively strict (but see Section 6.2.2), the same cannot be said for
the spoken mode. Consider the following authentic text fragment, taken from
Auchlin & Ferrari (1994: 196):
(21) # je pense souvent à l’exemple de # cette vieille femme en Thaïlande # qui
nous a offert un jour un verre d’eau alors qu’on mourait de soif au bord
du chemin #
‘I often think of the example of # that old woman in Thailand # who one
day offered us a glass of water when we were dying of thirst at the side of
the track’
In this text fragment the prosodic organization does not correspond to the
semantico-syntactic organization, but rather to its organization in discourse
units, as becomes clear from the following paraphrase.
(22) (1) Il y a un exemple auquel je pense souvent. (2) C’est celui d’une vieille
femme rencontrée en Thaïlande. (3) Un jour que nous mourions de soif
… (Auchlin & Ferrari, 1994: 196)
‘There is an example that I often think of. It’s the one about an old
woman I met in Thailand. One day when we were dying of thirst, …’
The boundaries of the discourse unit thus appear to coincide with the boundar-
ies of the intonation unit. Together with the observations in Section 4.1 above
this might suggest that there is a closer correspondence between the prosodic/
orthographic structure and the discourse structure than between the syntactic
structure and the discourse structure.
4.3 Two types of discourse structure
Before using these conclusions to formulate a more specific description of the

notion of act, we need to return to our discussion of example (9) in Section 3.2,
repeated here for convenience:
(9) Pierre est sorti malgré la pluie.
‘Pierre left despite the rain’
Recall that in this case we argued that it only seems appropriate to distinguish
two different acts if the punctuation or prosody invites us to interpret the sen-
tence as involving two distinct communicative steps. As such, example (9) is
very similar to (15) and (16). However, the argument of the Geneva School
researchers seems to imply that there is something inherent to the meaning of
malgré la pluie which allows for a two-acts-in-one-clause reading. Interestingly,
an approach to discourse act segmentation that bears some resemblance to that
of the Geneva School researchers is taken by Verhagen (2001: 341). Verhagen
discusses the Dutch sequence in (23a), and gives the translation in (23b):
(23) a. Te uwer informatie merk ik nog op dat client voorziet dat het niet
eenvoudig zal zijn om snel ander werk te vinden. Daarbij komt dat
zijn echtgenote zwaar gehandicapt is en dat hij een gezin heeft te
onderhouden.
b. For your information I note that my client anticipates that it will not
be easy to find another job fast. To this should be added that his wife
is seriously disabled and that he has a family to care for.
Verhagen notes that while the sequence involves two text segments correspond-
ing with the two sentences, it is clear that the writer is adducing three arguments
Acts and the relationship between discourse and grammar 03
to support his client’s position: the problem of finding work, his wife’s state of
health, and his duties towards his family. He acknowledges that the two ar-
guments presented in the coordinated subject clauses in the second sentence
may be seen as a set, which might be added to the single argument in the first
sentence, but for him the point is that “segmentation precedes the assignment
of structure” (2001: 354n). We interpret this as meaning that the conceptualiza-
tion of the steps to be taken to achieve the communicative aim of a move is in
some sense independent of the strategic planning of acts. In other words, from
one point of view there is talk of only one strategic act, namely the adding of
a set of arguments, while from another there are two conceptual acts, because
two separate arguments are being put forward. The GDM’s two-act analysis of
example (9) might similarly be seen as an analysis in terms of conceptual acts,
and not in terms of strategic acts. Note incidentally that in example (21) above
both types of discourse structure, conceptual and strategic, coincide.
Given the discussion so far, it will be clear that what we have been analysing
as acts are not acts in this conceptual sense — acts as ideas or acts as arguments
— but rather acts in the strategic sense — acts as separate communicative steps.
In more general terms this amounts to saying that until now we have been us-
ing the term ‘discourse structure’ quite simplistically for what actually appear
to be two different types of discourse organization (conceptual and strategic),
corresponding to two different modules in a functional discourse model of the
natural language user. While the conceptual organization probably relates to
the conceptual component of FDG, the position of the strategic organization
in this model is as yet unclear to us (see Section 7).
5. A refined view of acts
5. Conceptual planning and strategic planning: Ideas versus acts
On the basis of the discussion in Sections 3 and 4 we can now propose a more
refined definition of act. First it is important to recognize that acts are elements
of discourse planning and hence are to be considered as essentially cognitive
in nature. However, as we have seen, discourse planning involves at least two
types: conceptual planning and strategic planning. Accordingly, what the lan-
guage producer does in order to achieve her discourse aims, or in other words
to make her move, may be seen in both conceptual and strategic terms. We
have the impression that in other approaches only one side of the coin is taken
into account, or that the distinction involved is not made at all, which has led
to a lack of transparency in the use of the term act. The specific way in which
we see the difference is as follows:
1. At the conceptual level of analysis the basic units of discourse structure are
essentially ideas: conceptual planning involves creating content elements
in an intended move. These content elements convey the ideas underlying
the conceptual discourse representation. The units distinguished by GDM
(e.g. Rossari 1996, Roulet et al. 2001) and Verhagen (2001) in the case of
(9) and (24) respectively fall under this category. In order to distinguish
these units from those that arise from strategic planning, we will reserve
the term ideas for units of the conceptual kind.

2. At the strategic level of analysis ideas have been turned into steps which
the language producer plans to execute. The strategic plan may have split a
single idea into two steps (arguably the case in e.g. (14b), (15) and (21)), or
taken two ideas and fashioned them into one communicative step, as in the
case of (23). In addition, planning activities may have led to the develop-
ment of new steps which the language producer feels are required in order
to optimize the management of the ideas that form the basic material to be
communicated, as in the case of (11)–(13). For all these strategic steps we
will reserve the term act.
5.2 Types of acts
On the basis of this description of act as a strategic step which the speaker
wishes to take, we can make a distinction between two fundamentally different
types. First, acts may indeed convey ideas of events, states or referents. Such
acts, which usually coincide with what we have called ‘ideas’ above, are per-
formed in order to effect a change of their own account in the state of the ad-
dressee’s discourse memory: they add to the representations in the addressee’s
mental model. They usually have a predicational structure and are character-
ized by pragmatic autonomy in the form of a topic-focus structure. Following
Chafe (1994), we will call these acts substantive acts.
At the same time there are acts which do not effect a change in discourse
memory at all, but rather are instrumental in effecting such changes, in that
they regulate either the information flow or the interaction itself (see e.g. Chafe
1994: 63–4; Brazil 1995, ch. 15; Dik 1997, ch. 17). They may have to do with the
speaker’s mental processes (let’s see), with explicitly structuring the discourse
(so; well; that is; see also examples (11–12) above), with speaker judgments
(alas; fortunately; of course), and with hearer involvement (y’know). In general,
one might say that these acts are all concerned with discourse management,
and as such we will call them regulatory acts, again following Chafe (1994).
Regulatory acts largely correspond with what Stenström (1994), working in
the Birmingham tradition, calls complementary acts and with what Rouchota
(1998), working in a Relevance Theory context, calls procedural acts.
In terms of Functional Discourse Grammar, an important difference be-
tween the two types of act can be seen on the representational level. Substan-
tive acts will tend to correlate with predicational structures, although by no
means necessarily. By contrast, procedural acts will tend to be non-predica-
tional, including even clausal structures such as I suppose and you know, which
are formulaic and can best be analysed as indivisible chunks.

Examples (24)–(28) serve as an illustration of the difference between sub-
stantive acts and regulatory acts. Note incidentally that we take no account
here of those segments which Chafe (1994, ch. 5) calls ‘truncated’ or ‘fragmen-
tary’ acts, i.e. acts which are interrupted before they reach completion. The
substantive acts are in bold while the regulatory acts are underlined:
(24) You are playing tennis tomorrow at ten, eh? (Rouchota 1998: 119)
(25) Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, shall we start the game? (Dik 1997b: 387)
(26) Confidentially, the conference will have to be called off. (Rouchota 1998:
97)
(27) He was new here then # new back here # you know (Stenström 1994: 47)
(28) That guy, is he a friend of yours? (Kroon 1998: 5)
In (24) the tag eh can be described as a regulatory act which clarifies the specific
illocutionary intention of the message conveyed by the substantive act. Exam-
ple (25) contains two regulatory acts: text-organizational and hearer-involving,
respectively. In (26) the regulatory act has to do with speaker attitude, and in
(27) with hearer involvement. Finally, in (28), the segment that guy orients the
addressee to the information conveyed by the upcoming substantive act, and
instructs her to select and activate a certain referent from discourse memory in
order for her to be able to process the upcoming substantive act is he a friend
of yours. In a similar vein, Geluykens (1987: 57) notes with regard to a compa-
rable example (Steve — he likes beans) that two separate moves are involved in
an interactional process, which is the same as saying that we are dealing with
two discourse acts.
These examples show that the subset of acts we have labelled ‘regulatory’ is
quite heterogeneous, in function as well as in form (for subdivisions of regu-
latory acts see Chafe (1994: 64) and Stenström (1994: 46)). The one thing we
want to draw attention to here is that regulatory acts do not necessarily encode
��
��
��
��
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Figure 5. Classification of basic discourse units
what Rouchota (1994) calls ‘procedural meaning’ (e.g. well, so, eh), but may
also contain conceptual information such as confidentially in (26), and that
guy in (28). In Section 6 we will return to the issue of regulatory acts with a
conceptual content.
Figure 5 contains an overview of the distinctions proposed.
From the perspective of the relations that acts entertain with each other a
further, a rough distinction can be made — at least as far as the substantive acts
are concerned — between main acts and subordinate acts. These are what oth-
ers have variously called acte directeur and acte subordonné (GDM), primary
act and secondary act (Stenström 1994), and nucleus and satellite (Mann &
Thompson 1988). In addition, we assume for the substantive acts the value of
some system of rhetorical relations similar in kind to that of Rhetorical Struc-
ture Theory (cf. Mann & Thompson 1988). Examples of such relations are Jus-
tification, Motivation, Orientation, Background, and the like. An example of a
rhetorical relation of justification is (29):
(29) Wednesday is quite a good day # cos I don’t teach at all on it (Stenström
1994: 44)
Although regulatory acts may also in some sense be considered as subordinate

to the discourse units to which they pertain, we recognize that this type of re-
lationship cannot be described in the same rhetorical terms. For instance, the
content of a regulatory act may involve specifying what the rhetorical relation
is between two other substantive acts, which makes the relation it entertains
with the relevant substantive act of an entirely different order. We will not go
into any further detail here, but suggest calling such relations ‘management
relations’.
6. The linguistic realization of acts
In this section we turn to the linguistic realization of discourse acts. First we

present a basic hypothesis for English, and then we seek support for the hy-
pothesis by considering in turn cases of punctuational variation and different
types of mismatch between syntax and intonation. The greatest challenge to
the hypothesis comes from cases where punctuation units and intonation units
isolate major constituents of the clause.
6. A basic hypothesis for English
Our basic hypothesis is that in English, discourse acts are preferably realized by
intonation units for the spoken language and punctuation units for the written
language. Let us first very briefly make clear what we mean by intonation units
and punctuation units, and how we see the relationship between them.
Intonation units (IUs)

Intonation units are segments of speech with a specific, identifiable intonation-
al contour, the boundaries of which are indicated by pauses. We propose that
neither hesitation nor repetition pauses (And # and …) count as IU boundar-
ies. By contrast, false starts may be seen as realizing incomplete or defective
discourse acts (cf. Chafe 1988a; Steen, in press).
Punctuation units (PUs)

A punctuation unit is any stretch of language occurring between the members
of any given pair of correlative punctuation marks, regardless of the possible
occurrence of interpolated punctuation units. Note that this definition cuts out
serial punctuation marks, as in red, yellow and blue. Note also that punctua-
tion units may be discontinuous, as illustrated in (30): the segments John and
writes extremely well together form one single discontinuous PU, which ‘hosts’
another PU (and Sally too).
(30) John, and Sally too, writes extremely well. (Quirk et al. 1985: 976)
We will return to this example in Section 6.3.

Chafe (1988b, 1994) has given some consideration to the relationship be-
tween intonation units and punctuation units. Although there are reasons for
not consistently equating the two — individuals vary, styles change — he still
regards it as rewarding to look at punctuation as if it did reflect intonation
units. The major difference, we would suggest, is that whereas intonation units
reflect what Chafe calls single ‘ideas’ as foci of consciousness, punctuation
units reflect single but extended foci of consciousness: they are often bigger
than their spoken language intonational counterparts. The fact that punctua-
tion units tend to encompass much more than intonation units do can be seen
as an artefact of the written and spoken systems: the planning capacity offered
by the written medium makes for writers performing relatively more content-
rich acts than the on-line production capacity in many speaking scenarios.
6.2 Acts and intonation units

In this section we will have a closer look at cases of mismatch between syntax
and intonation, in order to substantiate our claim that in oral English discourse
the strategic discourse organization is more strongly reflected in the prosodic
than in the syntactic structure. First we consider cases where there is into-
national integration of elements which have considerable degrees of syntactic
independence.
6.2. Intonational integration of syntactically independent elements

In speech, when expressions which are typically accorded a separate intonation
unit are in fact integrated into the adjacent intonation unit, our claim is that
that they should not be analysed as constituting separate acts. There are a num-
ber of analyses in the literature which support this view. For instance, Francis
and Hunston (1992) treat initial well as a separate act if followed by a pause,
but give it no such status in cases in their data where there is complete integra-
tion into the intonation contour. In fact, their starting point is that “an act must
always begin with a new tone unit” (1992: 133). Compare (31) with (32):
(31) A You got home all right? You weren’t too tired?
B Well er, I got up pretty late myself, I mean I — I was supposed to get
up at about seven o’clock. (Francis & Hunston 1992: 157)
(32) A It was written helium that he -er that was what was written on the
um &
B No, but I mean —
A & on the tank or something
B Well what was it then?
A Sorry?
B What was it then? (Francis & Hunston 1992: 159)
In (31) well er constitutes a separate intonation unit and separate act, while
in (32) well is integrated into the question. As a separate act, its function is to
mark the onset of a move; this is the case in (31) but not in (32), where it makes
no specific contribution to the development of the discourse in its own right.
A similar argumentation can be found in Stenström (1994: 24), with regard to
the discourse marker now.
Interestingly, non-initial conjuncts and disjuncts are also often integrated
with the previous element (cf. Wichmann 2001: 177, Gómez-González 1998:
98), as is the case with the first IU in (33):
(33) more typically however # it’s not the governments # but business
enterprises which ship the imports (Gómez-González 1998: 98)
Smits (2002: 88) argues that sequences like this can best be analysed as a dis-
tinct cognitive unit, with the elements more typically and however combining
to provide a complex orientation for the information that follows. For us this
amounts to saying that the speaker is performing a single, albeit complex, regu-
latory discourse act.
The integration or non-integration of question tags can also be explained
in terms of act status. Consider (34):
(34) So England deserved their victory did they.
This is a particular type of tag with positive polarity both in the main clause
and in the tag. It is often characterized by integration of the tag into the intona-
tion unit of the clause (cf. Quirk et al. 1985: 812), and functions in a markedly
different fashion from the most common tag type. The typical two-act analysis
of tag questions is that the statement in the main clause expresses an assump-
tion and the question in the tag seeks either to gain clarification with respect
to one’s doubt about the truth of the statement (as with a rising tone in the
tag) or to get confirmation of the certainty one has regarding the truth of the
statement (as with a falling tone) (cf. Downing and Locke 22002: 203). But tag
constructions like those in (51) are used very differently. Rather than involving
a statement and a request for a response, the speaker is in cases like this in fact
simply drawing a conclusion from the previous discourse, and not really seek-
ing a response at all. There is no separate discourse task for the tag to perform,
and the interpretation thus amounts to a one-act analysis.
Finally, consider (35), quoted in Bolinger (1989: 97):
(35) I didn’t make you lose it what are you talking about!
0 Mike Hannay and Caroline Kroon
This is an example from spontaneous speech of the intonational integration

of two complete independent clauses. For Bolinger, such integration creates “a
macro-constituent answering to a mood or passion”. Contextualized, it is clear
that (35) may realize one single discourse act.
The signal which intonational integration coupled with syntactic non-
integration sends to the addressee is that on the one hand the contribution of
the integrated element to the understanding of the discourse can be determined
on the basis of its various semantic and syntactic properties but on the other
hand there is no need in the language producer’s estimation for the addressee
to process this information independently. It is interesting to note that where
syntactic units with various degrees of internal complexity are integrated, the
associated contribution of the integrated unit is often of an attitudinal kind.
6.2.2 ‘Launching’: Intonational separation of syntactically integrated ele-

ments
The opposite situation to that discussed in Section 6.2.1 arises where the prin-
ciple of syntactic integrity is broken and elements of one single syntactic struc-
ture are presented as two separate intonation units. This occurs exceptionally
in written English, but is much more common in the spoken language, in par-
ticular where the grammatical subject is presented independently from the rest
of the clause. Consider the following examples from Brazil (1995: 185):
(36) This old lady # told her about her daughter.
(37) The traffic # was bad.
Interestingly, in Tench’s (1990: 43) analysis of a 10,000-word corpus, there was

a great tendency for clauses of 5 or 6 words to contain just one IU, whereas in
clauses of about 9 words the typical segmentation was into two IUs consisting
of the subject term and the predicate, as in (36–37) above. In the first instance
this might suggest that the function of the initial IU may be related to length
and processing ease, although that is hardly relevant for (37).
However, Brazil interprets the function of the initial IUs in (36)–(37) more
in informational terms, appealing to a distinction between two kinds of about-
ness. In this regard he first discusses (38), noting that in one sense this sentence
is about the referent of he, and that in another sense it is about what happened
finally.
(38) Finally # he agreed to take her.
Acts and the relationship between discourse and grammar 
The first sense — with regard to the function of he — is related to what is tradi-
tionally seen as the function of the subject-topic; the second sense — concern-
ing the function of finally — is seen by Brazil as hearer-related, a preliminary
announcement of what the sentence is going to be about. This distinction is
reminiscent of that between ideational theme and discourse theme in Systemic
Functional Grammar (cf. Downing and Locke 22002: Ch. 6). What is special
about the isolated phrases in (36–37) is that they perform both functions rolled
into one. It is as if on the one hand the referents are presented and on the other
hand they have something predicated of them, all in one.
The preliminary announcement function is of special interest here, and is
clearly related to the domain-specifying function of left-dislocated elements.

This relation leads us to suggest, albeit somewhat tentatively, that a speaker’s
decision to present a separate IU in these cases reflects a particular kind of dis-
course act, which we would call an act of launching. The first discourse step is
to give preliminary notice of what the focus of interest is going to be. In terms
of the types of discourse act we distinguished in Section 5, this can be classi-
fied as a regulatory act. In fact we have already considered other examples in
earlier sections which might also be seen in terms of launching. A case in point
is (14b), where we first suggested that the initial act represented by de ce film
entertained an orientational function with regard to the main act.
Although the phenomenon of ‘launching’ is typical of spoken discourse,
occasionally we encounter similar cases in the written mode as well. An ex-
ample is (39), taken from Nunberg et al. (2002: 1744):
(39) What the Government obviously needs to do, is to see out the remainder
of their term of office without any more national sporting disasters.
In many kinds of written texts, long and complex subject clauses are not un-
common. While commas might sometimes be used in such cases to ease pro-
cessing, as is suggested by Nunberg et al.’s comments, we would like to suggest
that the effect created is in fact very similar to what Brazil discusses for spoken
examples in terms of preliminary notice. In other words there is a case here
too for seeing the exceptional use of punctuation with subject noun phrases as
constituting an act of launching. There may be both a speaker/writer-oriented
and an addressee/reader-oriented side to the launching of complex referents.
Particularly in cases of informationally weighty phrases, the speaker/writer
may on the one hand wish to put her first referent in place, as it were, to have
it out of the way, before going on to perform an ascriptive subact in the sec-
ond half of the sentence; this is a speaker/writer-oriented task. On the other
hand, launching is an addressee/reader-oriented activity in that it constitutes

a preliminary announcement of what the utterance is going to be about. Both
aspects are involved in the notion of launching.
But this act-oriented approach to isolated phrases is not unproblematic.
What, specifically, do we do with the second IU in (36–37)? Because of the
double aboutness-function of the launching act, this second act can also be in-
terpreted in two ways. In one sense it simply constitutes the main act, for which
the subordinate launching act provides a theme-like orientational framework;
in another sense it pairs with the initial act in its subject-topic function, and
completes what has already been started. It is this second sense which we feel is
problematic, since there appears to be little difference between launching and

completion on the one hand and topic and focus on the other. On this view, the
presentative interpretation and intonational prominence of launching phrases
might indeed be alternatively explained in act-internal terms. For instance,
FDG recognizes pragmatic functions like Topic and Focus as being relevant at
the interpersonal level for describing the status of individual referential and as-
criptive subacts within the relevant act. In this light, one might envisage a ref-
erential subact being specified for a particular kind of presentative pragmatic
function, which might then trigger a particular intonational pattern in the case
of spoken production and under certain more restricted circumstances the use
of the comma in written production.
Cases of launching, in both the written and spoken modes, represent per-
haps the most extreme case of a mismatch between discourse structure and
syntactic structure. While launching can be related to the domain-specifying
function of a left-dislocated element, something that clearly constitutes a regu-
latory discourse act, there is a sense in which the function of the intonation
unit which separates a major constituent from the rest of the clause might bet-
ter be analysed in act-internal terms. In other words, the relative semantic and
syntactic independence of left-dislocated elements, conjuncts, disjuncts, and
possibly even framing adjuncts readily permits an analysis in terms of discrete
discourse units, while such an analysis is perhaps less plausible for major con-
stituents of a clause. Launching, then, relates to the area where the tension
between discourse and syntax is at its greatest.
6.2.3 Conclusions
This subsection on speech has looked on the one hand at cases where one IU
embraces two syntactic units, and on the other hand at cases where one syn-
tactic unit embraces two IUs. The discussion allows two separate conclusions.
Acts and the relationship between discourse and grammar 3
Where the IU embraces two syntactic units, we have seen that our basic hy-
pothesis is supported by a whole range of cases where syntactic units which
would typically be presented as separate IUs representing distinct discourse
acts seem to contribute in a different way to the interpretation of the utter-
ance when they are integrated. In a number of the cases discussed, they have
an intensifying function. Where one syntactic unit embraces two IUs we have
seen that the initial IU may indeed be interpreted as being used to perform a
distinct discourse act, which we have characterized as an act of launching, but
we must also concede that there is an attractive alternative analysis whereby
the presentative, announcing interpretation associated with certain IUs might
also be analysed as a special pragmatic feature of referential subacts, on an

act-internal level. Consequently, while it appears that discourse acts as we have
defined them do indeed get realized by intonation units, we want to emphasize
that it may not be the case that the sole function of intonation units is to signal
discourse acts as we have defined them (cf. Auchlin & Ferrari 1994).
6.3 Acts and punctuation units
We assume that each sentence contains one core punctuation unit, in the mini-
mal case the unit bounded by full stops at the beginning and the end. Further
punctuation units may be prepended, as in (40), appended, as in (41)–(42), or
interpolated, as in (43) (= (30) above).
(40) However, cases like this are few and far between.
(41) They visit many schools, sometimes in an official car. (Quirk et al. 1985:
912n)
(42) The train arrived — on time, for a change. (Quirk et al. 1985: 912n)
(40) is a standard case of a prepended conjunct being used to execute a regula-

tory act, with attention being focused on the connection between two substan-
tive acts. Indeed, punctuation guides often propose correlative punctuation
marks as the norm for conjuncts. In (41) Quirk et al. claim that we are dealing
with an appended clause rather than an adjunct. The interpretation they give
is that (41) involves two assertions, first that the people concerned visit many
schools, and second that some of their visits are in an official car. The second
assertion does not include the idea that many schools are visited in an official
car, which makes it clear that there are two propositional contents involved,
and therefore two clauses. A somewhat similar case is (42), with the exception
that the form the train arrived on time could indeed be seen as constituting a
single clause. However, here too Quirk et al. opt for a two-clause analysis, by
analogy with (41). In the case of (43), finally, Quirk et al. note that interpo-
lations like these have to be treated as separate units from the subject noun
phrase because they do not codetermine the number of the verb. The sentence
can be interpreted along the lines of (44):
(44) John writes extremely well, and the same goes for Sally.
It is this kind of paraphrasability that leads Quirk et al. to award non-verbal

structures such as those in (40–43) the status of clauses. What Quirk et al. are
arguing for here is in fact act status for the various fragments in (31–34); see
Section 7 below for a brief discussion of the problematic nature of the concept
of clause in this regard.
6.3. Punctuational variation

Of the examples in (40)–(43) only (42) might be expected to occur in a
punctuation-free variant, in which case it would occur in a different context
and be interpreted as involving a single proposition with a single information
focus, and hence a single act. But in written English there are also contexts
where writers can choose whether or not to use comma punctuation, and it is
here that we can see the communicative effect that punctuation has.
First there is the matter of punctuation with coordinated clauses in Eng-
lish. With regard to and clauses it has been noted (cf. Quirk et al. 1985: 1616)
that there is a greater tendency for two coordinated clauses to be separated by a
comma if they for instance have different grammatical subjects. Other distinct
features, such as tense, type of state of affairs, and illocutionary and rhetorical
value may also play a role. This is illustrated in (45), where a comma is really
required:
(45) However, the authorities then decided to withdraw their financial
support for the project, and this is generally seen as the real cause of the
project’s demise. (from Hannay & Mackenzie 2002: 186)
Conversely, the more the clauses have in common, at all levels of description,
the more likely it is that writers will not use a comma, which will result in two
ideas being brought together in one extended focus of consciousness (cf. Chafe
1994: 140).
Something similar appears to be the case with relative clauses that have
an indefinite host, as in example (46), discussed by Bache & Jakobsen (1980).
Bache & Jakobsen note that relative clauses with an indefinite host can often be
presented as either restrictive or non-restrictive in the same context; in both

cases omission does not alter the meaning of the text, or affect the interpret-
ability. Consequently, one has to accept that speakers sometimes have a choice
between the two types of relative clause. The choice is between presenting in-
formation as one or two separate information units, in other words between
performing one or two discourse acts.
(46) a. Sam went on, he decided he would tread wary. So instead of
gumshoeing after Commercial Boris himself he stayed home and
briefed a couple of locally based leashdogs who specialized in
pavement work. (From John le Carré, The honourable schoolboy, Pan

books, p. 78, quoted in Bache & Jakobsen 1980: 252)
b. Sam went on, he decided he would tread wary. So instead of
gumshoeing after Commercial Boris himself he stayed home and
briefed a couple of locally based leashdogs, who specialized in
pavement work. (punctuationally adapted version)
What we have tried to show here is that in a number of cases in written Eng-
lish where punctuational variation is possible, the effect of the punctuational
decision can be described in terms of the specific, independent contribution
to the ongoing discourse of the PU concerned. To perhaps a lesser extent, the
same goes for the case of punctuationally isolated subject clauses mentioned
in 6.2.2. The relation between punctuational variation and communicative ef-
fect constitutes support for the idea that one major function of punctuation in
written English is to signal the boundaries of discourse acts as we have defined
them here.
6.3.2 The role of punctuation

It might be objected that to attach such importance to punctuation is to over-
state its role as a system designed essentially to aid readability by inviting the
reader to process the incoming information in neatly delineated chunks and by
so doing pay attention to one piece of newsworthy information at a time. We
feel first of all that such a view of punctuation is in fact not at all incompatible
with the view we are presenting here, in the sense that punctuation invites the
reader to pay attention to successive chunks of information and construct a
discourse representation in distinct steps which — at least in the majority of
cases we have discussed — are related by such rhetorical notions as elabora-
tion, explanation, etc. In fact, we believe that it would be a valuable enterprise
to take punctuation out of the realm of stylistics and to develop a discourse
theory of punctuation which fits into a wider theory of verbal interaction.
However, one danger with viewing punctuation as an individually, and

perhaps even somewhat randomly, applied set of signs is that it too easily sug-
gests that punctuation does not have any systematic communicative effect. The
examples we have discussed suggest that this is not the case.
Our main concern has been to argue that punctuating is more than an
activity which operates on the outcome of any language production process, as
it were, and is motivated independently of communicative intention. Rather,
punctuation decisions relate at least in part to the writer’s wish that the actual
form of linguistic expressions should reflect the step-by-step build-up of an
utterance. At the same time, punctuation provides an instructional signal to
the reader to build a discourse representation by processing specific chunks of

information and relating them to each other. The consequence of this approach
is that in a discourse-sensitive model such as FDG, where linguistic expres-
sions are formally represented so as amongst other things to capture features of
communicative intention which are coded in the expressions themselves, one
might expect punctuation to be the specific realization of features of the inter-
personal level of the grammatical component, where rhetorical and pragmatic
aspects of linguistic expressions are dealt with.
Finally, we should stress again that our considerations here relate specifi-
cally to English, although we expect that they may be relevant for other lan-
guages as well, although to different degrees. English does differ clearly from
for instance German, where punctuation is strongly governed by syntactic
criteria. One implication is that readers of German texts would often have to
look for other cues than punctuation to determine the segmentation of the text
sentence in terms of discourse acts.
7. Implications for Functional Discourse Grammar
In the previous sections we have developed the notion of the strategic act as
being relevant for considering the relation between discourse structures and
grammatical structures. We have also sought to motivate a strong relation for
English between strategic discourse acts on the one hand and intonation and
punctuation units on the other. Our last step is to consider the concrete im-
plications for Functional Discourse Grammar, as the grammatical component
of a functional model of the natural language user. This component has been
more elaborated in a formal sense than the linguistic module of the Geneva
model has been, although the relations between FDG and the other compo-
nents of the model are only at an initial stage of development compared to

GDM (cf. Roulet et al. 2001; for consideration of the contextual component in
FDG see Connolly 2004 and Gómez-González 2004; for aspects of the concep-
tual component in FDG see Anstey 2002).
How might sentences like those given in (47a–c) be analysed in FDG?
(47) a. He waited, for ages.
b. He waited. For ages.
c. He waited for ages.
The sequences in (47a–b) differ from (47c) in that they contain 2 PUs, while
(47c) involves just one PU. We assume that (47c) can be analysed as involving a
single act and a single propositional content, in much the same way as (2) given
above in Section 2, and we will concentrate here on (47a–b), which we will as-
sume involve two separate discourse acts (see also the discussion of a similar
case in Steen, in press, Section 4.2).
Underlying the FDG model is the notion that acts are the basic steps per-
formed in pursuance of the speaker’s communicative aims. Given the more
detailed view of act that we have developed so far, one might ask how the act
structures developed at the interpersonal level of the grammar might relate
to the structures at other levels of the grammar. Let us first consider the im-
plications for the underlying semantic structures at the representational level.
Recall (30), analysed by Quirk et al. as involving not NP coordination but an
interpolated clause:
The way Quirk et al. use the term clause suggests a correlation between il-
locutionary, semantic and syntactic structures, in that the interpolated clause
is awarded its syntactic status on essentially semantico-pragmatic grounds: in
(32) two separate propositions and two separate assertions are involved, which
analysis is supported by the fact that the number of the verb is governed by the
singular John, despite coordination with the interpolated element.
Accordingly, we assume for cases like this that the representational struc-
ture reflects the interpersonal structure: the decision to perform two substan-
tive acts is paralleled by the building of two distinct semantic structures. On
this view, the interpersonal structure for both (47a) and (47b) above would be
as in (48), while the representational structure for both would be as in (49).
(48) (M1: [A1: [DECL (P1) (P2) (C1: [(T1) (R1)] (C1))] (A1)]
[A2: [DECL: (P1) (P2) (C2: (R2) (C2))] (A2)]Elab (M1))
(49) (p1: (e1: [f1: PAST waitV (f1)) (x1: he (x1)) (e1)) (p1))
(x2: ages (x2))dur
What (48) says is that there is a move M1, consisting of two acts A1 and A2, with
the communicative content C1 of the first act comprising a referential subact
R1 and an ascriptive subact T1; the second act is related to the first by the rhe-
torical function Elab(oration), which triggers the placement of the non-clausal
construction after the main clause. Finally, the Declarative illocutionary predi-
cate DECL is assigned not only to the main act but also to the subordinate act
because it may function to provide a trigger not only for the selection of clause
type but also for the prosodic features of the expression (cf. Hengeveld 2004a:
18, fn.3). In (49) we have a propositional content consisting of a single state
of affairs corresponding to ‘he waited’, plus a term x2 relating to the individual
entity ‘ages’; the term carries the semantic function Dur(ation).
It should be noted that this approach is in contrast with standard prac-
tice in Functional Grammar (cf. Hannay 1998 for discussion of similar cases),
which has been to assign only one predicational structure to sequences like
(47a–b), regarding the satellite for ages as a non-restrictive adjunct. The ad-
vantage of the present proposal is that the semantic structure is a more precise
reflection of what the speaker actually means.
Now consider again (13), given here in an abbreviated form as (50):
(50) I wrote a script that was my best work so far. The producers loved the
script, the money people came on board smooth as pie, a star attached
their name, the film was a go go.
Then.
The producer, who’d just had a big hit by accident, tried to get
clever. He didn’t want a tough director to stand up to him so he hired a
woman who had only ever directed a twenty-nine minute short for BBC
Wales who he thought could be pushed around … (Alexei Sayle (2000),
Barcelona Plates. London: Hodder and Stoughton, p. 26.)
One significant difference between Then in (50) and (47a–b) is that the non-
clausal structure which is used to express a discourse act does not occur after
the related clause but before it. One immediate effect is that the type of illocu-
tionary paraphrase which is available for (47a–b), whereby the appended ele-
ment constitutes a separate assertion, is more difficult to establish. This might
in the first instance suggest that a unified predication analysis for Then plus
the following sentence is more attractive than a multi-predicational analysis.
On the other hand, however, it must be noted that Then does not relate solely
to what the producer proceeded to do, but rather to a whole chain of events.
The paragraph division forces the reader’s attention onto the linking adverbial,
and the communicative effect is indeed to create a climax of expectation: the
kind of thing that happened after this specific point in time is different from
before. This involves actually severing the notion of Then from the series of
events which follow, in which case an appropriate clausal paraphrase might be
along the lines of Then things happened. Consequently one can argue here after
all that Then has a semantic structure which is independent from that of the
following clause.
If this is the case, the question is what the appropriate analysis would be of
elements such as conjuncts, disjuncts and even spatio-temporal adjuncts which

typically occur in an early position in the sentence, before the clause or clauses
that they relate to, and serve discourse management functions. In the standard
model of Functional Grammar such elements were analysed as propositional,
illocutionary and rhetorical satellites, at the higher levels of the layered struc-
ture of the clause, but it may be that they should not be analysed as elements
of clause structure at all, and that their contribution to the meaning of utter-
ances should rather be handled by the rhetorical relations which the relevant
discourse act entertains with the main act (cf. Hannay 1998: 209).
To summarize then, the positing of two act structures for cases like (47a–b)
and (50) can be paralleled by two separate semantic structures. We can now
turn to a second question concerning the representation of (47a–b), this time
relating to the syntactic structure at the structural level. Does the distinction of
two act structures and two semantic structures mean that two syntactic struc-
tures should be recognized? In other words, are we dealing with two clauses or
just one?
The outcome of the interpersonal and representational levels in FDG pro-
vides the input for processes at the structural level. Prime among these is the
application of a syntactic template which assigns an ordered syntactic structure
to what are unordered semantic and pragmatic structures. If we are dealing
with two clauses, then the template is applied twice, with the expression for
ages filling a clause-initial position (cf. Mackenzie 1998: 284). If we are dealing
with one clause, then the template is only applied once, and for ages then fills a
typical adjunct slot in the template.
What is striking here is that the most appropriate analysis may be deter-
mined by a particular view of the notion of clause. If we follow the approach
taken in Quirk et al. (1985), then the clause can be seen as a term applying to
any linguistic structure which can be paraphrased as having an independent
propositional and illocutionary content. On this view, (47a–b) would be as-

signed not only two separate structures at the interpersonal and representa-
tional levels but also two separate structures at the structural level. By contrast,
we might follow the incremental approach to structure building taken by for
example Ford et al. (2002). On this view, the notion of clause is to be under-
stood as an abstract formula according to which linguistic expressions can
be constructed. In this case one may say that (47a–b) each comprise a single
clause, because what is produced up to the verb waited does not exhaust the
structure-building potential of the clause formula.
It is this latter view that is more appropriate in the context of FDG. Hen-
geveld (2004a: 6) intends clause in FDG to be seen not in illocutionary terms,

as was the case in the standard model of Functional Grammar (Dik 1997a:
292), but as a purely structural concept, in the context of a general approach
to syntax where it is seen as a tool for organizing the process of combining
linguistic meanings, as Harder (1995: 221) puts it. We therefore conclude that
(47a–b) can best be analysed as constituting one clause at the structural level.
It remains in general the case, however, that an understanding of the re-
lation between discourse structures and grammatical structures is dependent
not only on a clearer understanding of the core concepts in discourse but at the
same time of a clearer understanding of traditional grammatical concepts. In
the case of FDG too we feel that the position is not totally clear. For instance,
the units identified as relevant at the structural level above the clause are the
sentence and the paragraph. There is no problem with the idea that a sentence
may contain just one clause, but it is difficult to conceive of the two sentences
in (47b) as containing one clause between them. This would then suggest that
the notion of sentence has to be more clearly defined than hitherto, and may
indeed not have a place at the structural level of description.
This unclarity brings us to the third and final issue which we would like to
briefly address, concerning not what (47a–b) have in common, but rather the
punctuational feature that distinguishes them. We have assumed thus far, and
continue to assume, that the underlying representations of (47a–b) are exactly
the same up to the structural level. How, then, might we account formally for
the closure in (47b), and indeed for the paragraph division that separates Then
from the rest of the text in (50)?
What we would like to suggest is that the contextual component of the
functional model has a role to play here. Remember that after morphosyntactic
encoding has created a syntactic structure, this structure is passed on to the
phonological/orthographic level, which makes the final preparations for the
Acts and the relationship between discourse and grammar 2
actual production of the utterance. At this point in the construction of (47a–b),

the division of acts at the interpersonal level might be expected to trigger the
assigning of intonation units or punctuation units. But which precise form is
chosen, (a) or (b), may depend on the effect the writer wishes to create. The
contextual factors affecting the choice may include genre and the attitude of
the writer.
One way this may be formalized is by assuming that the contextual compo-
nent feeds the outcome of the structural level, offering information pertaining
to what in GDM is called periodization (cf. Roulet 1997; Roulet et al. 2001),
that is to say information about the presentation of the structural clause as
either one or two orthographic sentences.
8. Conclusion
Our discussion of the status of acts has produced two main conclusions. First,
we have described discourse acts as distinct steps which the language producer
executes as a result of strategic planning in order to realize her communicative
intention. This is in contrast to the notion of units of conceptual planning, for
which we reserve the term ‘idea’. In order to gain a fuller understanding of the
notion of discourse act it is also important to recognize Chafe’s distinction be-
tween substantive acts and regulatory acts.
Second, the data we have presented suggests that for English there is a
strong tendency for discourse acts to be realized by intonation and punctua-
tion units rather than by syntactic units. However, problems do remain. With
cases of what we have called launching, it is not clear whether the use of into-
nation and punctuation should always be associated with performing a fully-
fledged discourse act. In order to provide an adequate formal treatment of such
cases, it will be necessary to have a more detailed understanding of discourse
organization in terms of rhetorical and management relations on the one hand
and pragmatic relations on the other.
Consideration of the implications of the discourse–grammar interface for
a formal account of utterances in terms of FDG has also revealed that it is not
only the notion of act which needs a more precise definition. With regard to
the structural level of the grammar, we found that the relationship between
discourse and semantic structures on the one hand and syntactic structures
on the other hand is dependent on a more precise understanding of the status
of syntactic units. The endeavour to relate discourse, semantic and syntactic
structures in a formal model is a valuable one, since it forces a precise approach,

but more precision is required in all areas.
Received 29 January 2003
Revised version 2 December 2004
Note
* We are very grateful to two anonymous reviewers and to Matthew Anstey, Wim Rem-
melink and Chris Butler for their detailed and critical comments on an earlier version of
this paper. We would also like to thank Kees Hengeveld for discussion of relevant aspects
of Functional Discourse Grammar, as well as other members of the Amsterdam Functional
Grammar colloquium for their valuable comments on oral presentations of the issues ad-
dressed in this text.
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Corresponding author
Mike Hannay
Opleiding Engels
Vrije Universiteit
Amsterdam
Netherlands
m.hannay@let.vu.nl

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Acts and the relationship between discourse

Mike Hannay and Caroline Kroon

In modelling the discourse–grammar interface, a central question concerns

A current trend in linguistics involves attempts to link discourse models to

Functions of Language 12:1 (2005), 87–24.

speakers take are translated automatically into semantico-syntactic units

2. Functional Discourse Grammar

2. General outline of the model

Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) is a recent development of the Func-

bal interaction. Earlier versions of Functional Grammar entertained the same

Figure . An expanded version of FDG (Hengeveld 2004b: 376)

the speaker means. The resulting representation is then morpho-syntactically

Figure 2. The top-down path from intention to expression

Although inspired by Levelt’s (1989) view of language production, Hen-

2.2 The interpersonal level of the grammatical module of FDG

���������� ��� ����

Speaker A: moveinvitation ((act1)preparation (act2))

Figure 4. Relational organization

as it is encoded in the linguistic expression. The choice of a declarative struc-

3. What is a discourse act? Some preliminary problems

3.2 Acts and illocution

Barcelona Plates. London: Hodder and Stoughton, p. 26.)

or less forces the Geneva school researchers to discard intonation/punctua-

4. Structural matches and structural mismatches: Towards a new

4. Structural mismatches between discourse and syntax

group of constructions where there is no such correspondence (or where this

One way of approaching these constructions is to argue that they consist of

4.2 Prosodic/orthographic structure and its relation to syntax and

(Nunberg et al., 2002: 1744)

One might struggle to interpret the communicative import of the isolated he

Nevertheless, while the principle of syntactic integrity in the written mode

structure and the discourse structure.

4.3 Two types of discourse structure

Before using these conclusions to formulate a more speciﬁc description of the

5. A reﬁned view of acts

5. Conceptual planning and strategic planning: Ideas versus acts

the term ideas for units of the conceptual kind.

5.2 Types of acts

are formulaic and can best be analysed as indivisible chunks.

Although regulatory acts may also in some sense be considered as subordinate

6. The linguistic realization of acts

In this section we turn to the linguistic realization of discourse acts. First we

6. A basic hypothesis for English

Intonation units (IUs)

Punctuation units (PUs)

We will return to this example in Section 6.3.

6.2 Acts and intonation units

6.2. Intonational integration of syntactically independent elements

This is an example from spontaneous speech of the intonational integration

6.2.2 ‘Launching’: Intonational separation of syntactically integrated ele-

Interestingly, in Tench’s (1990: 43) analysis of a 10,000-word corpus, there was

clearly related to the domain-specifying function of left-dislocated elements.

hand, launching is an addressee/reader-oriented activity in that it constitutes

problematic, since there appears to be little diﬀerence between launching and

also be analysed as a special pragmatic feature of referential subacts, on an

6.3 Acts and punctuation units

(40) is a standard case of a prepended conjunct being used to execute a regula-

It is this kind of paraphrasability that leads Quirk et al. to award non-verbal

6.3. Punctuational variation

presented as either restrictive or non-restrictive in the same context; in both

pavement work. (From John le Carré, The honourable schoolboy, Pan

6.3.2 The role of punctuation

However, one danger with viewing punctuation as an individually, and

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