Some Exploratory Discourse on Metadiscourse

In this section two competing hypotheses about what features are initially missed during the acquisition of spatial adjectives will be reviewed. Following this review, the missing-feature theory itself will be put to a test and will be found wanting. In the next section a revision of the missingfeature theory will be developed. 1 But there is no doubt in my mind that animals can do very many complex things of which we have not the faintest inkling, and I think even the study of vocalization is still promising for the linguist.2 Yes, my countrymen, I own to you that, after having given it an attentive consideration, I am clearly of opinion it is your interest to adopt it [the Constitution].3 The reader will be pleased to remember, that, at the beginning of the second book of this history, we gave him a hint of our intention to pass over several large periods of time, in which nothing happened worthy of being recorded in a chronicle of this kind.4 Many different answers to this question would be worth serious consideration. But I submit that these selections, written by different people at different times for very different purposes, are stylistically most similar in that they all include a significant portion of some kind or kinds of metadiscourse. Metadiscourse is a term that perhaps is new to many composition teachers. For although it and some very similar terms have some currency in linguistics