This book offers a comprehensive study of the sentence group as an intermediate linguistic unit between sentence and paragraph, covering its definition, characteristics, classifications, construction and segmentation, pedagogical applications, and research implications across theoretical and applied linguistics.
This book makes several significant contributions. First, it provides a rigorous definition of the sentence group and identifies six defining characteristics. Second, it develops a multidimensional classification system encompassing twelve structural relations, six functional types, and the single layer versus multilayer distinction. Third, it systematically examines both internal and external cohesion between adjacent groups, alongside internal and external segmentation procedures. Fourth, it demonstrates the pedagogical value of sentence groups in grammar-rhetorical instruction, language skill training, and logic teaching. Fifth, it explores the explanatory power of sentence groups in theoretical and applied research. Finally, it surveys both Chinese and international research traditions, revealing a convergence on the need for a unit intermediate between sentence and paragraph.
This book is intended for linguists and researchers in grammar discourse analysis, and applied linguistics; language teachers and educators in first and second language instruction; grauduate and advanced undergraduate students in linguistics, Chinese language studies, and language pedagogy; and researchers in natural language processing and artificial intelligence concerned with discourse-level language phenomena.