Cooptation in Discourse Grammar: A Reconciliation Process between Sentence Grammar and Thetical Grammar

Discourse Grammar treats two separate but interrelated domains for discourse processing: Sentence Grammar (SG) and Thetical Grammar (TG). The former deals with the structure and meaning of sentences while the latter deals with the organization of discourse at the level beyond the sentence as well as the relationship between linguistic materials and the contextual situation of discourse. Cooptation as a cognitive process mediates between these two domains of language use. It encompasses linguistic elements such as a clause, phrase, word or other chunks of a text located in Sentence Grammar domain are transferred to the domain of TG providing a tool for coding components of the situation of discourse for which SG seems unable to facilitate the discourse function required. The present study investigates the process of cooptation and some unknown issues related to it. Moreover, it divides coopted units according to their structures of instantaneous, constructional and formulaic types. As far as their placement is concerned, coopted units can anchor either in their host utterance or in their context in four ways. In addition, certain motivations including mental processing, economy and iconicity are required in order to cooptation being operationalized. These motivations interact and compete with each other to organize the discourse in an appropriate way.