Johanna,
I am just now getting back into the ATEG listserv (my
former email address was discontinued) and have
received only the last 15 postings (two days' worth),
so I hope my comments are relevant.
In my 1982 dissertation, I investigate(d) some of the
questions you raise - what becomes a subject and why,
when do we produce passives.  In fact, I developed a
framework that predicts what situations would be most
likely to result in passives. The framework also
predicts readability of texts.  The only variables are
animacy, agency, and givenness of the NP's in
transitive situations.  Actives and passives are given
"polarity" ratings, where  sentences of high
polarities are more likely to occur and more readable,
while sentences of low polarities are less likely and
less readable.  The sentence production experiments
and the textual analyses I performed (by hand)
supported the predictions.  The title of the study is
"The Prediction of Passive Occurrence in Written
English" or something like that.  I can provide more
details to anyone who's interested.
--- Johanna Rubba <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I, too, am interested in the 'text grammar' idea,
> but when I talk about
> the grammar/text relation, I am talking about
> something a little more
> 'local': not the overall pattern of a text, but the
> determination of a
> sentence's grammar by its position in a particular
> text. What winds up
> in subject position and why? Why are appositives
> inserted with subjects?
> When do certain types of sentences appear (passives;
> pseudo-clefts) and
> why? How do pronoun-antecedent connections get
> established? I continue
> to suspect that the best way to understand
> subject/predicate as sentence
> constituents is to appreciate how they are used in
> distributing
> information -- given vs. new information; topical
> vs. detail
> information, etc. -- and in maintaining coherence or
> topic thread.
> Things like SFG's 'theme/rheme' distinction (poor
> terminology, in my
> view, but an interesting structural observation).
>
> Looking at the overall structure of a text is
> useful, for sure -- I
> would never suggest that it's not a worthwhile topic
> in writing classes.
> But I think the more 'local' matters I discuss in
> the paragraph above
> tie study of sentence grammar directly and
> immediately to context, and
> therefore to writing.
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Johanna Rubba   Assistant Professor, Linguistics
> English Department, California Polytechnic State
> University
> One Grand Avenue  • San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
> Tel. (805)-756-2184  •  Fax: (805)-756-6374 • Dept.
> Phone.  756-259
> • E-mail: [log in to unmask] •  Home page:
> http://www.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
>                                        **
> "Understanding is a lot like sex; it's got a
> practical purpose,
> but that's not why people do it normally"  -
>    Frank  Oppenheimer
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


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