Cognitive status and referential acts in functional discourse grammar

2018

In Functional Discourse Grammar, both Ascription and Reference are characterized as actional processes and are captured at the Interpersonal Level of linguistic description. Additionally, the temporal sequencing of Discourse Acts seems relevant to establishing dependency relations among them. However, the remainder of the levels of representation in the theory contain static descriptions of linguistic structures and not of processes. In this paper, I will argue that this is the result of an inherent contradiction between FDG’s characterization as a static grammar and the dynamicity of verbal interaction, which is best solved if the theory commits itself to the procedural nature of the Inter…