Measuring the effect of discourse connectives on discourse comprehension: a cautionary note on the use of free recall

  • Melinda Sinclair Department of General Linguistics., Stellenbosch University

Abstract

Even a cursory look at handbooks of writing reveals that these handbooks regard the relationships between utterances, and the way these are signalled by the writer, as important elements in effective writing. One of the devices used for signalling relations between utterances are the so-called "discourse connectives", also called "(cohesive) conjunctions", after Halliday and Hasan (1976), or "discourse markers". These include words and phrases like so, after all, therefore, but, although, nellertheless.
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