The choice of grammatical forms and constructions used for event descriptions, such as voice, differential case 
marking, or the realization of argument expressions, can be influenced by many different factors. One such 
factor is the internal organization of a text into what we call here “(larger) discourse units”.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a number of works on the internal structure of discourse have been published
(cf. Chafe 1980, Longacre 1979, van Dijk 1981) that investigate the syntax and semantics of so-called 
“paragraphs” or “episodes” in spoken and written language, i.e. units characterized as “coherent sequences of 
sentences of a discourse, linguistically marked for beginning and/or end, and further defined in terms of some 
kind of 'thematic unity' – for instance, in terms of identical participants, time, location or global event or action” 
(van Dijk 1981: 177). While in written language, discourse units are usually signalled graphically, in oral or 
signed speech such units are much less easily recognizable.

In the literature on the segmentation of discourse one finds basically two approaches: the unit-based approach 
and the cohesive-ties approach. Longacre (1970, 1972), one of the major proponents of the unit-based approach,
assumes a hierarchical discourse structure where higher level units are built from lower level ones: sentences 
from clauses, paragraphs from sentences, chapters from paragraphs, etc. (cf. also Hinds 1979). Frameworks like 
Rhetorical Structure Theory (e.g. Mann & Thompson 1987) or Segmented Discourse Representation Theory 
(Asher & Lascarides 2003) segment discourse into basic units by assigning rhetorical relations such as 
“Explanation”, ”Elaboration”, “Contrast”, etc. Similar attempts have also been made for conversational data: 
Egbert et al. (2021) have defined units by their communicative goals; Flammia (1998) assumes “discourse 
segments” to span over several “dialogue moves”, usually spanning over several “dialogue turns”. Swerts (1997),
finally, investigates the role of prosody in signalling hierarchical discourse structure.

Cohesion-based approaches, in contrast, as proposed by Halliday & Hasan (1976), focus on the means that turn 
a sequence of clauses into a coherent text through the use of e.g. anaphors, conjunctions, or ellipsis. Kehler 
(2019) additionally distinguishes “coherence” as a phenomenon defined in terms of the underlying semantic 
relationships that characterize and structure the transitions between utterances.

The present workshop is based on a collaboration between the projects “Morphosyntax in Discourse” of the 
LABEX Empirical Foundations in Language in Paris (https://en.labex-efl.fr/) and “Prominence-related structures in
symmetrical voice systems and Papuan languages” of the Collaborative Research Centre Prominence in 
Language in Cologne (https://sfb1252.uni-koeln.de/en/). We hope to discover operationalizable methods for 
identifying larger discourse units with the help of semantic, lexical, grammatical and/or prosodic cues both in 
well-studied and in more recently documented languages. We are particularly interested in cues that so far have 
not been considered as being discourse boundary related such as differential case marking, specific voice 
constructions, etc. The workshop is meant as an opportunity for researchers from different theoretical 
backgrounds and with an expertise on typologically distinct languages to make further progress in the analysis of 
discourse data. We invite abstracts (anonymous, max. 500 words plus abbreviation and reference list) on topics including but 
not restricted to the following

-          cues for unit boundaries
-          cues for cohesion within a unit
-          discourse units in different text genres
-          units in monologic vs. dialogic discourse
-          discourse structuring in spoken vs. written language
-          the role of reported speech for discourse structure
-          …


Keynote speakers: 

Jakob Egetenmeyer (Universität zu Köln)
Tatiana Nikitina (CNRS, Paris)

Dates:   

End of submissions:                  January 20th, 2024
Notification of acceptance:         February 2nd, 2024
Workshop dates:                       March 21st-22nd, 2024

Scientific Committee: 

Isabelle Bril
Katharina Haude
Nikolaus P. Himmelmann
Sonja Riesberg
Fahime Same

Contact and abstract submission: 

Katharina Haude & Sonja Riesberg
units@sciencesconf.org


Website: 

https://units.sciencesconf.org/administrate-website/homepage

References: 

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Asher, Nicholas and Alex Lascarides. 2003. Logics of conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chafe, Wallace. 1976. Givenness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics, and point of view. In Charles 
Li (ed.), Subject and topic, 25–55. New York: Academic Press.

Chafe, Wallace. 1980. The deployment of consciousness in the production of a narrative. In Wallace Chafe (ed.),
The pear stories, 9–50. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex.

Chafe, Wallace. 1994. Discourse, consciousness, and time: The flow and displacement of conscious experience 
in speaking and writing. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press.

Egbert, Jesse, Stacey Wizner, Daniel Keller, Douglas Biber, Tony McEnery and Paul Baker. 2021. Identifying and 
describing functional units in discourse in the BNC Spoken 2014. Text&Talk 41(5-6), 715–737.

Flammia, Giovanni. 1998. Discourse segmentation of spoken dialogue: An empirical approach. PhD dissertation, 
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Halliday, Michael A. K. and Ruqaiya Hasan. 1976. Cohesion in English. London: Longman.

Hinds, John. 1979. Organizational patterns in discourse. In Talmy Givón (ed.), Syntax and semantics 12. Discourse 
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Kehler, Andrew. 2019. Cohesion and coherence. In Paul Portner, Claudia Maienborn und Klaus von Heusinger 
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Longacre, Robert E. 1979. The paragraph as a grammatical unit. In Talmy Givón (ed.) Syntax and semantics 12. 
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organization. Text 8(3), 243–281.

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