Grammaticalized temporal categories, language specificity, and macroplanning in expository texts

Abstract

The linguistic knowledge which is brought to bear in carrying out a complex task such as a narrative or route directions has been at the centre of a series of studies on language-specific patterns in the organization of information for expression. Analyses of oral and written texts in German, Standard Arabic, and Russian show different patterns in macro-structural organization and macroplanning that correlate with grammatical features of the respective languages. The findings for expository texts present evidence for a hierarchy of factors in the organization of information that are linked to grammaticalized temporal categories and their role in guiding options in perspective taking and information organization at text level. We assume that inflectional categories function as a scaffold in organizing content for expression since concepts that have paved their way into the grammar of a language will have prominence in language use, given their obligatory status in associated domains of reference. Global planning principles allow the speaker or writer to integrate knowledge from different sources on a systematic basis and thus meet constraints with respect to text coherence without having to solve core issues for each sentence anew.