Grammatical realizations of rhetorical relations in different registers

In this paper, we will report on our ongoing investigation of the realizations in the lexicogrammar of English of rhetorical relations in the semantic organization of texts belonging to a range of different registers. More specifically, we are concerned with different kinds of lexicogrammatical realizations of the rhetorical relations of Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST). In Section 1, we specify our research questions, relating them to complementary research activities. In Section 2, we introduce the theoretical and descriptive accounts that we need as background for the main account in our paper - RST, lexicogrammatical forms of realization, and a contextual classification of registers that we have used in sampling texts from different registers. In Section 3, we will analyze a few text exemplars of different registers, comparing them in terms of their RST structures - and also in terms of the patterns of lexicogrammatical realizations. In Section 4, we will then explore a sample of texts from a larger range of registers - All operating in written and monologic contexts but drawn from a number of fields of activity. In Section 5, we will discuss the results of our very exploratory investigation, and suggest how these results can inform future, larger-scale studies.