Publications
Publication details [#7565]
Pettinari, Catherine. 1982. The function of a grammatical alternation in 14 surgical reports. In Frawley, William, ed. Linguistics and literacy. Plenum Press. pp. 145–185. 
Publication type
Article in book
Publication language
English
Keywords
Language as a subject
Annotation
The paper demonstrates that in one type of text (surgical reports) the discourse function of the alternation between sentences with indefinite subjects and with the dummy subject 'there' is to provide an alternation between thematic and nonthematic information.