GRAMMARIAN vs. DISCOURSE ANALYST

Debated issues
• Discourse analyst argued the grammarians only concern with abstract sentences and symbols symbolized meaning but ignore the important of context.
• Grammarians are too much preoccupied by well-formedness. Meanwhile, well-formedness of language sequences is not a sufficient principle.

Fact
The judgment of discourse analyst not all is true:
Discourse analyst will never be able to ignore the role of syntax and semantics in a discourse.

Why???

• The role of syntax in discourse analysis field is in term of the relation of clause in a discourse.

What is clause???
- Clause is a cognitive process used for interpreting the meaning of sentences.

- There are two kinds of clause relation
a. logic clause relation
- Condition-consequence
- Instrument-result
- Cause-effect
b. mixed clause relation
- Compatibility matching (and, or, etc.)
- Context matching (but, however, nevertheless, etc)

In a whole we can say that the role of syntax and semantics to discourse analysis is to maintain the coherence of discourse.