Meaning Making in Text

Multimodal and Multilingual Functional

Perspectives

Edited by
Sonja Stare
University of Primorska, Slovenia
Carys Jones
King's College, University of London, UK
Arianna Maiorani
Loughborough University, UK
3
The Position of Connectors
in Slovene and Croatian Student
Academic Writing: a Corpus-Based
Approach
Tatjana Balazic Buie, Vojko Gorjanc

3.1 Introduction
Descriptive linguistic studies have long been based on data from lan-
guage use (Kennedy 1998: 9); lexicology and lexicography above all
are fields resulting from systematically collected texts (McEnery and
Wilson 1996: 90). With the emergence of a large number of different
types of corpora, corpus linguistic methodology began to be applied to
text linguistics, translation studies, sociolinguistics, stylistics and so on
(McEnery and Wilson 1996: 98-101, 111). Research based on corpus
methodology includes studies from the field of learner corpus research
which combines corpus linguistics, second language acquisition and
foreign language teaching. Among learner corpus studies quite a few deal
with the acquisition of academic discourse, most of them focusing on
English as a Language for Specific Purposes (LSP: see e.g. Altenberg and
Tapper 1998, Curado Fuentes 2001, Paquot 2010). With this study we
attempt to highlight the acquisition of the structure and organization
of academic texts from the viewpoint of two closely related languages -
Slovene and Croatian.
In order for students to be socialized into a disciplinary discourse
community and operate in it as successfully as possible, they must
acquire various competences during their studies. In this sense, reading/
listening, interpreting and producing academic discourse, both written
and spoken, and its various genres are among the most important com-
petences that need to be acquired. The most demanding genre at the
level of academic writing is unquestionably the research article, or, in
the learning environment, the term written assignment that tests these
competences. Both require a thorough knowledge of the text structure

51
52 Meaning Making in Text

and linguistic conventions of academic discourse, as well as an in-depth

understanding of logical sequence and argumentation procedures. In
addition, foreign language study also requires a high level of foreign
language proficiency. One of the linguistic elements typical of both
academic discourse and advanced language proficiency is connectors,
which play a double role in the text. On the one hand, connectors estab-
lish logical or semantic relations between parts of the text, and through
this, on the other hand, they simultaneously establish the interaction
between the author and the reader of the text, which is very important
for interpreting the text in academic discourse. By using connectors,
the author makes the text easier to understand (see e.g. Altenberg 1986,
Granger and Tyson 1996, Altenberg and Tapper 1998). Specifically, as
Rouchota (1996: 13) notes, 'connectives constrain the inferential phase
of communication by pointing to the particular inferential process that
the hearer is intended to go through'.
This chapter presents part of a study on the function and use of
connectors in Slovene and Croatian academic discourse (for more on
this study, see Balazic Bulc 2009), in which, as the title indicates, the
position of connectors in student academic writing is the focus of the
research. It is organized in four sections. The first is a short introduc-
tion to systemic functional linguistics and the use of corpus linguistic
methodology within its framework. The second presents the studies of
connectors in Slovene and Croatian linguistics. The corpus compiled
for the present study is used in section 3.4 as the starting point for
investigating which connectors are typical of Slovene and Croatian
academic discourse and how their use differs between professional and
student linguistic discourses. The final section briefly comments on the
methodological approach used in the study and suggests directions for
future corpus-based research on the acquisition of the structure and
organization of academic discourse.

3.2 Connectors in academic writing: a systemic

functional linguistics (SFL) and a corpus linguistics
(CL) perspective
In SFL, according to Halliday (1994: xxvi-xxvii), language is a system-
atic resource for expressing meaning in context, and linguistics is the
study of how people exchange meanings through the use of language.
In other words, linguistics is perceived as the study of language poten-
tials and the choices language users can make in a given setting, which
depends on the context in which the language is being used.
 Tatjana Balazic Buie, Vojko Gorjanc 53

A similar claim can be made about CL, the only difference between the
two being their slightly different purposes. As Tognini-Bonelli (2001: 2)
puts it: 'the aim of corpus linguistics can be seen as the analysis and
the description of language use, as realised in- text(s)'. Occurrence rather
than language potential is central to corpus research. Whereas in SFL
'meaning is located in the configuration of alternatives from which the
instance is chosen', in CL meaning 'derives from intertextuality, for
example, from recurrence across a large number of texts' (Thompson
and Hunston 2006: 2). However, it needs to be emphasized that in the
last two decades small corpora (compare Ghadessy et al. 2001) have also
become more important in CL, especially in studying language learning/
teaching as well as in text linguistics and academic discourse, in which
automatic tagging is often impossible. This is why small corpora are
considerably more manageable.
The development of CL has also revived interest in studying various
linguistic elements as a part of SFL. Thus, in recent decades, research on
connectors has increasingly included more corpus studies that are based
on Halliday and Hasan's (1976) theory of cohesion from an SFL perspec-
tive. However, the research area itself has changed somewhat. Research
no longer focuses merely on first language use, but to a large extent on
foreign language use, especially in the study of interlanguage at various
levels of knowledge (compare, for instance, Altenberg 1986, Granger
and Tyson 1996, Altenberg and Tapper 1998).
In the SFL concept of metafunctions (Halliday 1994), the func-
tion of connectors is textual, which means that they refer to the
language used to organize the text itself. Our definition takes as its
starting point Halliday and Hasan's (1976: 6) assumption that con-
nectors (or conjunctions in Halliday and Hasan's terminology) are
rather different from all other cohesive elements (reference, substitu-
tion, ellipsis and lexical cohesion). Connectors are not cohesive by
themselves; rather, they establish cohesion indirectly through their
meaning and the function they have in relation to other elements in
the text. In other words, connectors help the reader to predict other
components in the discourse. Thus they are not tied to any particu-
lar text sequence or element to form a structural semantic relation;
the semantic relation is established through their function, as can be
seen from Halliday and Hasan's (1976: 229) examples of adversative
relations:

(1) Although he was very uncomfortable, he fell asleep.

(2) He was very uncomfortable. Nevertheless he fell asleep.
54 Meaning Making in Text

Example (1) shows the structural relation within the sentence, whereas
in Example (2) the adverb nevertheless links two sentences and the link
between them is cohesive rather than structural.
Connectors establish relations between the elements in the text' at
two levels. Halliday and Hasan (1976: 321) state that 'the conjunction
may be located in the phenomena that constitute the content of what
is being said (external) or in the interaction itself, the social process
that constitutes the speech event (internal)'. Their understanding of
internal and external relations explains Examples (3) and (4) (Halliday
and Hasan 1976: 239):

(3) (First he switched on the light.) Next he inserted the key into the
lock.
(4) (First he was unable to stand upright.) Next, he was incapable of
inserting the key into the lock.

The adverbs in Examples (3) and (4) are both temporal. However, the
connector next in Example (3) (external relation) shows the relation
between events, whereas in Example (4) (internal relation) there are
only linguistic events. This means that the time sequence in Example (4)
is only in the speaker's organization of his discourse as a part of the
argumentation, and the sentences are therefore related as steps in an
argument.
The classification used in this study is slightly different. We catego-
rized connectors that explicitly link two utterances (within a sentence
or across sentences) as links (tagged as Lin the corpora), whereas those
connectors that link parts of the text and organize the text into a coher-
ent whole are categorized as organizers (tagged as O in the corpora).
Examples (5) and (6) show the Slovene additive (tagged as ADD in the
corpora) connector in [and]1 as a link and as an organizer (shown in
italic). The examples are taken from the specialized Slovene corpus of
linguistic texts (PROF-S), created especially for this study (see section
3.4). The corpora were divided into sequences (the beginning and the
end of a sequence are marked as <s> and </s> respectively) and the
sequences were divided into utterances (the beginning and the end of
an utterance are marked as <U> and </U> respectively). The corpora and
their annotation are presented in more detail in section 3.4.2.

(5) Najpogostejsa vrsta determinologizacije je delna</U><u>$in_L_

ADD to velja tudi v primeru fizike.</U><u>Delno determinolo-
gizacijo je (PROF-S-17)
 Tatjana Balazic Buie, Vojko Gorjanc SS

[The most common type is partial determinologization and this

also goes for physics. Partial determinologization is]2
(6) interpretaciji, se lahko to repliko razume kot sprenevedanje.
</U></S><S><U>$In_0_ADD kako se udelezenci diskurza zavaru-
jejo pred nesporazumom?</U> (PROF-S-16)
[the reply can also be understood as pretence.And how can discourse
participants protect themselves against a misunderstanding?]

As can be seen from these examples, the connector in [and] in

Example (5) links two utterances within a sentence, whereas it is used
in Example (6) as a text organizer which introduces a new theme in the
next sequence.
One of the characteristics of connectors is their ambiguity (van Dijk
1977), at the levels of both grammar and discourse. This means that
they are homonymous with various grammatical categories; for exam-
ple, conjunctions, adverbs and prepositional phrases (Sln. in [and],
zato [because], torej [thus], [so], kljub temu [nevertheless], posledicno
[consequently] and zaradi tega [because of that]). In addition, they
are homonymous in meaning, and thus almost every connector can
express different types of semantic relations (for example, Sln. zato
[therefore]/[because] can be used as an expository or conclusive con-
nector), as well as synonymous ones, which means that different types
of semantic relations can be expressed with different connectors (for
example, an expository function can be expressed with the Sln. connec-
tors tj. [i.e.], to je [that is], in sicer [namely], tako [thus], torej [thus], [so]).
Connectors are also genre-sensitive, which means that they reflect
the situation or, in other words, the conditions of performing speech
or writing. This means that every text genre has a specific set of con-
nectors, and the author of the text must be aware of genre expectations
regarding connector use. Altenberg (1986: 13) highlights the role of
connectors:

as signals of textual cohesion they provide valuable information

about the way speakers and writers structure and order information in
discourse, and about the constraints and strategies that determine
that process.

This is especially challenging in a foreign language because the use of con-

nectors is different in different languages and the author must be a highly
competent communicator (see also Granger and Tyson 1996, Altenberg
and Tapper 1998) to use an appropriate connector in a certain genre.
56 Meaning Making in Text

However, in Slovene and Croatian another issue concerning connectors

is important: their position in the structure. Their position may be the
same, but it is not always initial. They may occur (a) at the beginning
of the structure (initial position), (b) immediately after the first word or
phrase, sometimes followed by a verb (medial position), and in some cases
(c) both; see Examples (7) and (8). The connectors are indicated in italics:

(7) <u>Izbira strukturalnega leksikalnopomenoslovnega izhodisca

je vezana na prevladujoci tip razlagalnih slovarjev,</u><u>ki v
razlagah slovarskih pomenov odrazajo aristoteljansko spoznavno
nacelo, vkljucujoce kategoriji genus proximum in differentia
specifica,</U><u>$torej_L_EXP kategoriji, ki imata v struktural-
nem modelu slovarskega pomena (PROF-S-01)
[The choice of the structural lexico-semantic starting point is
linked to the prevalent type of explanatory dictionaries, which
reflect in their definitions of dictionary meanings the Aristotelian
cognitive principle including the categories of genus proximum
and differentia specifica, thus categories which have in the struc-
tural model of dictionary meaning]
(8) njem sporazumevalnih namenov v konkretnih jezikovnih polozajih,
</uxu>odkriva $torej_L_EXP smisel izrekov,26</uxu>slovar $pa_L_
ADV je,</U><U>$V nasprotju s tem_L_ADV (PROF-S-11)
[of communicative purposes in concrete linguistic situations, so
it reveals the meaning of the sayings, while the dictionary is]

Example (7) contains the Slovene expository connector torej [thus], [so]
in initial position (that is, at the beginning of the utterance), whereas
the same connector appears in medial position in Example (8).

3.3 Connectors in Slovene and Croatian linguistics

Even though SFL theory was developed as early as the 1960s and 1970s, its
findings have not had a major influence on Slovene and Croatian linguis-
tics, because most papers dealing with the use of connectors in the two
languages discuss this issue primarily from the viewpoint of coordinat-
ing and subordinating syntactic relationships (e.g. Silic 1984, Pranjkovic
1993 in Croatian), or only focus on other types of text connections (e.g.
Korosec 2006, Toporisic 1995 in Slovene). However, there are exceptions:
see Velcic (1987) in Croatian and Gorjanc (1998, 1999) in Slovene.
In Croatian linguistics Velcic (1987) considers connection to be a
process beginning at the moment of the communicative act; she
 Tatjana Balazic Buie, Vojko Go1janc 5 7

therefore rejects the morphological or the semantic-syntactic approaches

to connectors since such approaches are necessarily limited to sentence-
level and to formal structures, reducing connectivity to conjunctions
and adverbs. She highlights the fact that the role of connectors is not to
create subordinate or coordinate syntactic relations, but rather to estab-
lish logical connections between structures, to indicate the intensity of
these connections or the code, text organization and so on. Velcic; defines
connectors from a functional syntactic perspective as either simple or
compound units with the function of connecting neighbouring struc-
tures, that is, establishing a special grammatical, logical or other semantic
relation between two formal sentences or two clauses within a complex
sentence in a text. However, she excludes the elements connecting parts
within the same syntactically independent clause. Nevertheless, her clas-
sification of connectors is based on morphological, syntactic and seman-
tic criteria and on the formal syntactic structure of their elements: relative
as in sto [which], koji [which], gdje [where]; copulative as in i [and], jer
[because], ali [but]; adverbial as in medutim [although], ipak [nevertheless],
naime [namely]; phraseological as in na samom pocetku [to begin with],
jednom rijecju [in one word], na primjer [for instance]; and propositional
connectors as in nema sumnje da [there is no doubt that], navedimo jos
jedan primjer [let us give another example], while all the categories are
connected by their function in the text (that is, the functional grammati-
cal criterion). She includes adversative, explicative, conclusive, causal,
additive, consecutive, temporal, conditional and other connectors. Velci<~
claims that the primary position of a connector is the initial position
because the structure of the connector is emphasized in this position.
In Slovene linguistics, Gorjanc's (1998) definition of connectors
as a group of typical expressions of various types of syntactic and
morphological categories used to express interclausal relations or rela-
tions between two parts of a text is based on van Dijk (1977). Gorjanc
distinguishes between relative (such as the pronouns da [that] and ali
[whether]), copulative, adverbial and particle connectors. Like Velcic
(1987) he also classifies connectors according to their function within the
text, although he limits his discussion to a single genre, the mathemat-
ics research article. He claims that the most frequent relative expressions
include the connectors ki [which] and da [that], while the most frequent
semantic expressions include conditional connectors such as ce [if],
kadar [whenever], ce-potem [if-then]; causal - both coordinate types
such as saj [for], namrec [namely], kajti [for] as well as subordinate types
such asker [because], ko [when], ki [which]; explanatory types such as to
je [that is], in sicer [namely], na primer [for instance]; consecutive types
58 Meaning Making in Text

such as zato [so], tako [thus], tedaj [therefore] and adversative connectors
such as toda [however], vendar [yet], temvec [but], le da [only that], vendar
tudi [but also], pac pa [but]. In spite of their great frequency, additive
connectors are excluded from Gorjanc's study, because of his predomi-
nantly semantic focus.
The connecting properties of particles in Slovene texts have been
studied by Skubic (1999) and Smolej (2004). Both authors focus above
all on the grammatical classification of linguistic phenomena, paying
less attention to their interpretation from the point of view of text
structure and organization. Smolej (2004) primarily explores particles
as textual connectors which function as cohesive devices or textual
conjunctions; she claims that in addition to connecting the text, parti-
cles also express logical relations between parts of the text or indicate
the types of relations between various propositions. While her study is
based on discourse analysis, her interpretation of linguistic phenomena
is limited to a structuralistic approach.
The topic of connectors, although examined somewhat more broadly
on the basis of other theories, is also dealt with in studies of textual
connections (for example, Schlamberger Brezar 2009, Pisanski 2002,
Pisanski Peterlin 2011 and Verdonik 2006 in Slovene). Pisanski (2002,
Pisanski Peterlin 2011) focuses on text connectivity from a contrastive
Slovene-English perspective using a discourse analytical approach; she
studies the use of metadiscourse from the point of view of intercultural
differences in discourse organization. Her analysis is based on Halliday's
notion of the metafunctions of language (ideational, interpersonal and
textual), applied to the level of the text by other linguists (for exam-
ple, Vande Kopple 1985, Clyne 1987, Crismore and Farnsworth 1990,
Mauranen 1993, Hyland 2005, and so on). Her research focuses mainly
on previews and reviews, both of which fall within the category of
endophoric markers. Within this framework, connectors could be clas-
sified as transitions or code glosses. However, it needs to be pointed
out that only those connectors focusing on the text itself rather than
on its content (or internal connectors in Halliday and Hasan's (1976)
terms) can be considered metadiscoursive. Schlamberger Brezar's (2009)
Slovene-French contrastive studies are methodologically based on
functional grammar, but focus on pragmatics, based on the approach of
Anscombre and Ducrot (1983); this means that her analysis of connec-
tors mainly deals with their argumentative function.
More recent studies focusing on the properties of connectors from
the SFL perspective in greater detail have not been found or may not
be accessible.
 Tatjana Balazic Bulc, Vojko Gorjanc 59

3.4 The study

The focus of our research is on connectors as cohesive devices, which,

as already mentioned, express explicit logical or semantic relations
between parts of a text. The aim of our research was to determine which
connectors are typical of Slovene and Croatian professional and student
linguistic discourse, to establish whether there are differences in the
functions or frequencies of the use of connectors in two closely related
languages, and to determine the position of connectors in sentence
structure in both languages.

3.4.1 Methodology
Five small monolingual electronic corpora of specialized texts were
compiled especially for this study. First, two corpora of professional aca-
demic writing from two internationally recognized linguistics journals
were compiled: the Slovene corpus (PROF-S) from research articles pub-
lished in the journal Jezik in slovslYo (Language and Literature) 2003-5,
and the Croatian corpus (PROF-C) from the journal Govor (Speech)
2000-4. The PROF-S corpus includes 19 articles by 23 authors and com-
prises 70,164 tokens, and the PROF-C corpus includes 17 articles by 15
authors and comprises 68,836 tokens. Table 3.1 contains a list of the
basic corpora characteristics (Ll = author's first language, FL = author's
foreign language).
Second, three corpora of student academic writing were compiled:
a learner corpus of Croatian as a foreign language (STUD-C) with two
subcorpora at different levels of language proficiency (STUD-C-B2 and
STUD-C-Cl), and two control corpora of native student writing in
Croatian (STUD-C-Ll) and in Slovene (STUD-S-11). 3 For details, see
Tables 3.2 and 3.3.

Table 3.1 List of criteria used for compiling both professional specialized
corpora (PROF-S and PROF-C)

Criterion PROF-S corpus PROF-C corpus

Size 70,164 tokens 68,836 tokens

No. of texts 19 17
Medium Written Written
Source fezik in slovstvo (2000/1, 2003-5) Govor (2000-4)
Text genre Research article Research article
Topic Applied linguistics Applied linguistics
Authorship Professional authors: linguists Professional authors: linguists
Language Slovene as L1 Croatian as L1
60 Meaning Making in Text

Table 3.2 List of criteria used for compiling the learner corpus (STUD-C) with its
two subcorpora (STUD-C-B2 and STUD-C-Cl)

Criterion STUD-C-B2 STUD-C-Cl

Size 10,455 tokens 18,212 tokens

No. of texts 9 8
Average length 1162 words 2277 words
Medium Written Written
Discourse type Academic Academic
Authorship Non-professional authors: Non-professional authors:
students of Croatian as FL students of Croatian as FL
Text genre Term written assignment Term written assignment
Topic Lexicology Lexicology
Language Croatian as FL (B2) Croatian as FL (Cl)
Conditions Independent work with Independent work with no
under which no time limit, possible time limit, possible use of
the text was use of extra language extra language tools, not
created tools, not part of an exam part of an exam

Table 3.3 List of criteria used for compiling two student academic writing
control corpora (STUD-C-Ll and STUD-S-Ll)

Criterion STUD-C-Ll STUD-S-Ll

Size 36,007 tokens 17,994 tokens

No. of texts 14 7
Average length 2572 words 2571 words
Medium Written Written
Discourse type Academic Academic
Authorship Non-professional authors: Non-professional authors:
students of Croatian as Ll students of Slovene as Ll,
and students of Croatian as FL
Text genre Term written assignment Term written assignment
Topic Linguistics (phonetics, Linguistics (grammar,
morphology, normative normative rules, various
rules, lexicology, genre sociolinguistic issues)
analysis, etc.)
Language Croatian as L1 Slovene as Ll
Conditions in Independent work with Independent work with no
which the text no time limit, possible time limit, possible use of
was created use of extra language extra language tools, not part
tools, not part of an exam of an exam
 Tatjana Balazic Bulc, Vojko Gorjanc 61

3.4.2 Corpus annotation

As already described above, automatic tagging of textual language ele-
ments such as connectors is nearly impossible primarily due to their
overlap with other elements. Therefore, manual tagging was used in this
study, with the two researchers tagging the corpus. The texts were first
divided into text sequences (tagged in the corpora as 's') and then into
smaller units, that is utterances (tagged as 'u'), which were understood
in a somewhat broader sense as contextualized units of either spoken
or written language production (Schiffrin 1994; compare also van Dijk
1977) that are semantically and syntactically complete.
Tagging was problem-oriented, which means that connectors were
only tagged and classified according to their meaning and function in
the texts and not according to a scheme prepared in advance, as has
been the case in the majority of connector studies performed to date
(e.g. Halliday and Hasan 1976, Quirk et al. 1985). The most influential
and widespread among these is certainly Halliday and Hasan's (1976)
classification, which encompasses four main functions: additive, adversa-
tive, causal and temporal. Each of these functions is further divided into
many different subfunctions, but this can, sometimes, be too complex to
choose a right function for a certain connector. In our study we classi-
fied the connectors according to their main function in the actual text.
In this way we obtained eight functions, illustrated by the following
Slovene examples: additive (tagged as ADD), for example in [and], poleg
tega [in addition]; adversative (ADV), for example toda [but], po drugi
strani [on the other hand]; alternative (ALT), for example ali [or]; conclu-
sive (CCL), for example tako [so], torej [thus], zato [therefore]; expository
(EXP), for example to je [that is]; illustrative (ILL), for example na primer
[for example]; sequential (SQN), for example potem [next], zatem [after-
wards], and a special group of justificatory connectors OFC), for example
namrec [namely], which is not classified in Halliday and Hasan (1976).
The frequency of all connectors in both corpora was counted using
Oxford WordSmith Tools 4.0, and the list of connectors was made based
on the results. The ten most frequent connectors (Sln. pa [whereas], npr.
[e.g.], torej [thus], saj [for], tj. [i.e.], tako [so], namrec [namely], in sicer
[namely], zato [therefore] and vendar [yet]; and Cr. tj. [i.e.], dakle [thus], npr.
[e.g.], jer [because], meautim [yet], primjerice [for instance], i to [and], tako
[so], naime [namely] and a [but]) were subsequently qualitatively analysed.
3.4.3 Results and discussion
As already mentioned, the focus of our research in this chapter is on the
position of connectors in professional and student corpora. A quantitative
62 Meaning Making in Text

analysis was used to determine the frequency of individual connectors in

a specific position and a qualitative analysis was used to determine the
differences between the corpora.

3.4.3.1 Position of connectors in the PROF-Sand PROF-C corpora

It has already been mentioned that the corpora were segmented into lower
units of a text called utterances (in the broader sense). The study showed
that there are two types of utterances: (a) utterances (two or more) within
a single sentence, and (b) utterances that overlap with the sentence in
terms of structure. The connectors in them take three different positions:

Type 1: Connectors only occur between the utterances within a sin-

gle sentence (Example 9):
(9) izpostavljen custveni aspekt:</u><u>nekoga nekaj tezi, potem
pa se izkaslja,</U><U>$/j._L_EXP pove, kaj mu lezi na dusi.
</u><u>Lekseme, ki govorijo v prid tej (PROF-S-03)
[emotional aspect highlighted: someone is troubled by some-
thing, then he gets it off his chest, i.e. he says what bothers him.
The lexemes that speak in favour of this]

Type 2: Connectors occur between utterances that overlap with the

sentence in terms of structure (Example 10):
(10) le redko zgodi, da poslusalec oz. bralec besedila v tujem jeziku
ne bi razumel.</U><U>$ Tako_L_EXP se nam zdi samoumevno,
da gredo Anglezi for a walk, ceprav (PROF-S-04)
[rarely happens that a listener or reader of a foreign language
text would fail to understand it. Thus we find it self-evident that
the English go for a walk]

Type 3: Connectors occur in both types of utterances (Examples 11

and 12):
(11) naravni govorci nekega jezika se tega niti ne zavedamo,
</u><u>z usvajanjem jezika smo $namrec_L_JFC vso komplek-
snost tovrstnih povezav nezavedno uskladiscili,</U><U>njihov
(PROF-S-04
[native speakers of a language are not even aware of this, when
acquiring the language we have namely unconsciously stored all
the complexities of such connections, their]

(12) kohezije in koherence.</u><u>To se kaze v obeh skupi-

nah besedil.</u><U> Ponovne pojavitve so $namrec_L_JFC
 Tatjana Balaiic Buie, Vojko Gorjanc 63

najenostavnejsi (in za tuje govorce tudi najzanesljivejsi) mehanizem

(PROF-S-10)
- [of cohesion and coherence. This is reflected in both groups of
texts. Repetitions are namely the simplest (and for non-native
speakers also the most reliable) mechanisms]

As the examples above show, the expository connector tj. [i.e.] in

Example (9) and the justificatory connector namrec [namely] in Example
(11) appear between utterances within a single sentence, whereas the
expository connector tako [thus] in Example (10) and the justificatory
connector namrec [namely] in Example (12) appear between utterances
that structurally overlap with the sentence.
In addition, as already mentioned above, there are three types of
connector position in the structure of Slovene and Croatian: (a) initial
position within a formally independent structure - that is, the utterance
structurally overlaps with the sentence (Example 10), (b) initial position
within a composed formal structure - that is, two or more utterances
within one sentence (Example 9), and (c) medial position in a formally
independent structure - that is, the utterance structurally overlaps with
the sentence (Example 12). Velcic (1987: 61) emphasizes that initial
position is the primary connector position, which she substantiates
with the point that the closer the connector is to the beginning of a
formal structure, the more exposed or emphatic its function.
Previous research on Slovene and Croatian connectors suggested that
the medial position is totally free and that connectors may occur any-
where within the structure. However, this study has shown the oppo-
site: the medial position is generally fixed because connectors tend to
occur (almost without exception) after the first word or phrase, and may
also be followed by the verb. This places them between the theme and
the rheme in terms of functional sentence perspective (see Table 3.4).
In Example (13) the illustrative connector npr. [e.g.] follows the
deictic pronoun taksen [such] and the verb biti [to be], in Example (14)
the expository connector tako [thus] follows the phrase v ilokucijskih
pomenih [in illocutionary meanings], which expresses the circumstance,
and the reflexive pronoun se (which is part of the passive verb form),
whereas in Example (15) the justificatory connector namrec [namely]
follows the nominal phrase vsi zadetki v korpusu FIDA [all hits in the
FIDA corpus] and the verb biti [to be].
Table 3.5 shows the positions of the ten most frequent connectors
in the Slovene (PROF-S) and Croatian (PROF-C) professional corpora
(F = function: ADV = adversative, EXP = expository, ADD = additive,
64 Meaning Making in Text

Table 3.4 Medial position of connectors in corpus PROF-S

Ex. Theme Co_nnector Rheme

(13) Taksen je npr. The Oxford Dictionary of Foreign

Words and Phrases iz Zeta 2000
(PROF-S-05)
[Such is e.g. The Oxford Dictionary of Foreign
Words and Phrases from 2000,]
(14) V ilokucijskih pomenih se tako odraza specificen, italijanski slog
druzbene interakcije, kamor spada
(PROF-S-09)
[In illocutionary thus reflected a specific Italian style of
meanings is social interaction which includes]
(15) ... , vsi zadetki v korpusu namrec frazeoloski (PROF-S-17)
FIDA so
[all hits in the FIDA namely phraseological]
corpus are

CCL = conclusive, JFC = justificatory, ILL = illustrative, C = connector,

Pos = position, U = utterance, Fr = frequency; i = initial position; m =
medial position; i + m = both positions).
Table 3.5 shows that the positions of connectors differ consider-
ably between the two corpora, even though comparable connectors or
translation equivalents are frequently involved. On the one hand, some
connectors take different positions in the structure; for example, 'but'
in Slovene - vendar - appears in initial position, whereas in Croatian -
meautim - it appears in both initial and medial position; 'thus' in
Slovene - torej and tako - appears in both initial and medial position,
whereas in Croatian - dakle and tako - it only appears in initial posi-
tion, and so on. On the other hand, there are also differences between
types of utterances. Thus, for example, the Slovene connector torej and
its Croatian equivalent dakle appear in both initial and medial positions
in both languages, but in different types of utterances. In contrast to
Slovene torej, which appears in both types of utterances, the Croatian
dakle only appears in utterances that structurally overlap with the sen-
tence. A similar thing happens with 'because' /'for' in Slovene, saj and
in Croatian, jer.
It is also interesting that there is an apparent difference between the
corpora analysed in the frequency of initial and medial positions. In the
PROF-C corpus, a full 96 per cent of connectors (679 of the total of 710
connectors listed in Table 3.4) occur in initial position, whereas in the
PROF-S corpus only 57 per cent of connectors (540 of the total of 945
 Tatjana Balazic Bulc, Vojko Gorjanc 65

Table 3.5 Position of the ten most frequent connectors in the PROF-S and
PROF-C corpora

PROF-S PROF-C

F Type Pos C TypeU Fr Pos C TypeU Fr

ADV L vendar 3 19 a 3 233

vendar pa 1 8
m pa 3 96
i+m meautim 2 31/9
0 vendar 2 3
vendar pa 2 5
m pa 2 20
i+m metlutim 2 2/2
EXP L tj. 1 65 tj. 1 103
in sicer 1 50 i to 1 46
tako da 1 9 tako da 1 10
dakle 1 18
tako 2 26
i+m torej 3 27/23
tako 2 25/20
zato 3 53/10
0 m torej 3 12
ADD L a 3 25
m pa 3 63
0 m pa 2 11
CCL L i zato 3 5
i+m torej 3 1/10 i+m dakle 2 22/7
0 i+m torej 3 5/43 i+m dakle 2 7/4
tako 2 6/5
zato 2 5/1
JFC L i saj 1 105 jer 3 69
m namrec 3 69
i+m naime 2 28/6
ILL 0 tako npr. 2 6
tako
primjerice 2 2
kao npr. 1 4
i+m npr. 3 123/5 i+m npr. 1 51/2
na primer 3 16/7 na primjer 2 2/1
kot npr. 1 1/9
kot sta/so 1 3/1
npr.
66 Meaning Making in Text

connectors listed in Table 3.5) take initial position. This suggests that
the Croatian corpus (PROF-C) confirms Velcic's finding (1987: 61) that
initial position is the primary connector position, whereas this does
not apply to the Slovene corpus (PROF-S). For more on the position
of connectors in Slovene and Croatian academic discourse, see Balazic
Bulc (2011).

3.4.3.2 The position of connectors in the student corpora

Given that one of the goals of this study is to produce tools for teach-
ing academic writing in Croatian as a foreign language, this study
focused on the position of connectors in the learner corpus (subcorpora
STUD-C-B2 and STUD-C-Cl) and the results were compared with con-
nector positions in the corpora of student writing in Croatian as Ll
(STUD-C-Ll) and the corpora of Croatian professional academic writ-
ing (PROF-C). We proceed from the fact that the appropriate use of a
specific linguistic element is influenced not only by language skills, but
also by genre competence; however, the analysis focusing exclusively
on student corpora does not provide this information. Table 3.6 shows
the results of the analysis of the Croatian student corpora using the
same abbreviations as in Table 3.5.
Table 3.6 shows that in the student corpora the number of various
connectors is considerably lower than in the professional corpora
because only six of the ten most frequent connectors are used: primar-
ily the additive connectors, whereas only the conclusive connector
dakle [thus] and the illustrative connectors npr. [e.g.] with the variant na
primjer [for example] and primjerice [for example] are used as organizers.

Table 3.6 Position of connectors in the STUD-C-B2, STUD-C-Cl and STUD-C-Ll

corpora

STUD-C-B2 STUD-C-Cl STUD-C-Ll

F Type C C Pos Fr Pos Fr Pos Fr

ADV L medutim 1 i+m 5/1 i+m 18/3

EXP L dakle 2 10
tako 4 i+m 6/1 10
CCL L dakle 1 i+m 4/4 i+m 3/2
0 2 m 1 i 5
JFC L naime i+m 1/1 i+m 16/4
ILL 0 npr. i 7 i+m 4/2 i+m 81/6
na primjer i+C 1/1 m 2 i 4
primjerice i+m 4/3
 Tatjana Balazic Buie, Vojko Gorjanc 67

These connectors in particular are also interesting from the perspective

of their position. In the student corpora, approximately the same per-
centage of the conclusive connector dakle occur in initial and medial
positions (except in the ST,UD-C-B2 corpus, where it only occurs in initial
position): in the STUD-c':::c1 corpus 50 per cent occur in initial position
and 50 per cent in medial position, and in the STUD-C-Ll corpus 60
per cent occur in initial position and 40 per cent in medial position. In
contrast, in the PROF-C corpus the explanatory connector dakle occurs
considerably more frequently in initial than in medial position, the per-
centage in initial position being 76 per cent. Hence it can be concluded
that these discrepancies probably occur due to a somewhat lower dis-
course competence of students who are still learning to write in this genre.
This is similar to the case of the illustrative connector primjerice: in the
STUD-C-Ll corpus 57 per cent of these connectors occur in initial posi-
tion and 43 per cent in medial position, whereas in the PROF-C corpus,
88 per cent occur in initial position. It is interesting that the connector
primjerice is not even used once in both learner subcorpora and the reason
for this is probably limited linguistic skills. This is even more pronounced
in the case of the illustrative connector npr. which only occurs in initial
position in the STUD-C-B2 corpus, whereas in the STUD-C-Cl corpus
it occurs in both positions (the ratio between initial and medial posi-
tion being 67 : 33). In the STUD-C-Ll and PROF-C corpora, this ratio is
considerably higher, thus 93 per cent of these connectors occur in initial
position in the former, and 96 per cent in the latter.
Focusing on the position of all connectors, it can be seen that the
STUD-C-B2 corpus is dominated by initial position, whereas in the
other two corpora the positions are significantly more diverse. Table 3.7
provides a statistical overview of the ratio between initial and medial
position in the corpora analysed.
The results presented in Table 3.7 show that, in terms of the position
of connectors, the STUD-C-Ll corpus comes closest to the professional
Table 3.7 The percentages of initial and medial
position in the corpora analysed

Corpora Positions

Initial % Medial %

STUD-C-B2 18 95 1 5
STUD-C-Cl 20 63 12 37
STUD-C-Ll 151 89 18 11
PROF-C 229 87 35 13
68 Meaning Making in Text

academic writing corpus (PROF-C), whereas greater discrepancies can

be observed in the learner corpus: initial position predominates in the
STUD-C-B2 corpus (95 per cent of connectors), and medial position
predominates in the STUD-C-Cl corpus (a ratio of 63 : 37).

3.5 Conclusion
This chapter presents a study of connectors in two closely related lan-
guages, Slovene and Croatian, based on two linguistic approaches, SFL
and CL. The study shows, how, methodologically, CL can sometimes
supplement SFL to offer an enhanced understanding of language in
use. The case has been demonstrated by taking corpora as the main
source for forming the hypothesis. In this sense, a new classification
of connector functions was proposed and a list of connectors identi-
fied in the corpora was created. The CL approach also provided a more
accurate insight into the positions of connectors. The findings showed
that the medial position is not free, but generally fixed between the
theme and the rheme in terms of a functional sentence perspective.
The study has also revealed differences in connector positions between
the PROF-S and PROF-C corpora. In the Croatian professional corpus,
a larger percentage of connectors occurred in initial position, whereas
in the Slovene corpus the percentages in both positions were nearly the
same. The analysis of student corpora confirmed the hypothesis that
appropriate use of connectors in a foreign language is influenced by
both discourse and linguistic competence.
This type of research enables the production of up-to-date linguistic
descriptions to be included in Slovene and Croatian reference books
as well as appropriate materials for teaching academic writing in other
languages. This is especially important for Slovene and Croatian lingua-
cultures, both of which are faced with a shortage of contemporary lexical
and grammatical descriptions as well as a lack of didactic materials for
foreign language teaching at higher proficiency levels, above all in terms
of text production for various genres and the use of different registers.
The study presented in this chapter could be expanded in the future
by including other disciplines, thus enlarging the corpus. A larger cor-
pus would make it possible to draw more general conclusions regarding
academic writing and academic discourse acquisition. Since the corpus
used in this study was annotated manually, a larger corpus would nec-
essarily entail a focus on automatic corpus annotation although we are
aware of the fact that a certain degree of manual annotation will be
necessary to ensure a correct interpretation of corpus elements. This
 Tatjana Balazic Buie, Vojko Gorjanc 69

makes the compilation of a specialized corpus of this type particularly

challenging although time-consuming. The present study was designed
to compare two closely related languages, but it could be expanded to
include other unrelated languages to establish how academic discourse
acquisition is influenced by greater cross-linguistic differences as well as
more pronounced contrasts in discourse norms.

Notes
1. Because of the differences between the meanings, functions and use of
individual Slovene and English connectors, the English glosses are at best
approximations.
2. The English translations of the Slovene corpus examples are given in square
brackets [ ] throughout and are fairly literal.
3. B2 and Cl denote levels of foreign language proficiency according to the
Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). The CEFR sets
out six levels of foreign language proficiency: Al and A2, Bl and B2, Cl and
C2. B2 marks an independent user, and Cl a proficient user of a foreign lan-
guage (Council of Europe 2014). Detailed information on the CEFR levels is
in CEFR (2014).

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