Primary and Secondary classification

New in Version 2

After identifying engagement strategies, classify them into Primary and Secondary engagement strategies.

Primary engagement strategies

Primary engagement strategies are those that characterize the engagement of a T-unit.

Typically, the following grammatical structures tend to take primary engagement strategy (but not always):
- Main verb of a MAIN clause
- Adverbial/Prepositional phrases that modify the MAIN clause
- The entire adverbial clauses that modify the MAIN clause
- Modal verbs in a MAIN clause

Consider the following monoglossic utterance:

The best method to understand how language proficiency develops is to look at large-scale observations from various sources.

This utterance is monoglossic because the writer uses present tense ‘is’ to present the idea as if it is a fact. This is called a bare assertion (= Monogloss).

Primary engagement strategies will change the “tone” of this statement, either expand or contract the discourse, for example:

In my opinion (ENTERTAIN/Prepositional phrase), the best method to understand how language proficiency develops is to look at large-scale observations from various sources.
Perhaps (ENTERTAIN/Adverb), the best method to understand how language proficiency develops be to look at large-scale observations from various sources.
The best method to understand how language proficiency develops would (ENTERTAIN/Modal verb) be to look at large-scale observations from various sources.
Researchers proposed (ATTRIBUTE/Main verb) that the best method to understand how language proficiency develops is to look at large-scale observations from various sources.
Although it takes a great amount of effort (COUNTER/adverbial clause), the best method to understand how language proficiency develops is to look at large-scale observations from various sources.

MONOGLOSS should be used when JUSTIFY and CITATION is the only other moves.

Because Justify and Citation is treated as auxiliary engagement moves, we will tag MONOGLOSS to indicate that the sentence itself is presented monoglossic. For example:

I decided (MONOGLOSS) to writer a letter to the author because the figure contained an error (JUSTIFY).

The reason for this is that Justify and Citation is not determine the engagement of the whole clause (they are neither expand or contract the discourse).

Secondary engagement strategies

Secondary engagement strategies usually occurs in the EMBEDDED or SUBORDINATE clauses. This is because embedded and subordinate clauses are categorized as dependent unit to MAIN clause. They do not affect the overall engagement strategy of the sentence, but still contribute to the discourse to some extent.

Even the primary strategy is monoglossic, the sentence can still have secondary engagement strategies.

The best method to understand how language proficiency may (ENTERTAIN) develop is (MONOGLOSS) to look at large-scale observations from various sources.

In this example, the primary engagement strategy is monoglossic because there is no engagement resources that satisfies the criteria of primary engagement strategy defined above. However, it still has a modal verb (may) in an EMBEDDED clause. This modal very takes on secondary engagement (or ENTERTAIN category) in the sentence. It does not influence the overall clausal strategy, but still be considered entertaining the presupposed idea of the sentence.

Table of Content

The following is the table of content for the manual. The original deanonymized version of the manual has sidebars for annotators to navigate through the contents. This could not be implemented in this anonymized version for review.

Back to Home