Text transmitted electronically through computer-mediated communication networks is an increasingly available yet little documented form of written communication. This article examines the syntactic and stylistic features of an emergent phenomenon called Interactive Written Discourse (IWD) and finds that the concept of “register,” a language variety according to use, helps account for the syntactic reductions and omissions that characterize this historical juxtaposition of text format with real-time and interactive pressures. Similarities with another written register showing surface brevity, the note taking register, are explored. The study is an empirical examination of written communication from a single discourse community, on a single topic, with a single recipient, involving 23 experienced computer users making travel plans with the same travel advisor by exchanging messages through linked computers. The study shows rates of omissions of subject pronouns, copulas, and articles and suggests that IWD is a hybrid, showing features of both spoken and written language. In tracing variable use of conventions such as sentence initial lower case and parentheses, the study shows that norms are gradually emerging. This form of written communication demands study because, as capabilities expand, norms associated with this medium of communication may come to influence or even replace those of more traditional writing styles.

Greg W h i t t e m o r e K a t h l e e n F e r r a r a Electronic D a t a S y s t e m s Corp. AbstractThis empirical study attempts to find answers to the question of how a natural language (henceforth NL) system could resolve attachment of prepositional phrases (henceforth PPs) by examining naturally occurring PP attachments in typed dialogue. Examination includes testing predictive powers of existing attachment theories against the data. The result of this effort will be an algorithm for interpreting PP attachment.

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In this study we map out a way to build event representations incrementally, using information which may be widely distributed across a discourse. An enhanced Discourse Representation (Kamp, 1981) provides the vehicle both for carrying open event roles through the discourse until they can be instantiated by NPs, and for resolving the reference of these otherwise problematic NPs by binding them to the event roles.