For Comm1 Students under Ma'am Dimzon, TF 1:00-2:30PM

2. A paragraph is a unit of connected discourse
made up of a cluster of sentences that center
around a key idea or a key function. Paragraphs
are distinguished by the function they serve in
more extended discourse where they are parts
of a bigger whole.
 In longer stretches of discourse, then,
paragraphs may serve as introducer,
developer, extender, modulator, restater, or
terminator.

3.  The DEVELOPER PARAGRAPH is a cluster of
sentences that center around one key idea. Each sentence,
performs its own speech act and, if well written, is
logically and grammatically cohesive with all the other
sentences. Together the cluster of sentences enlarge upon
one given idea.
 The TOPIC SENTENCE expresses the central idea. It
contains not only the topic (subject matter) but the focus
of that topic, as well, i.e., what is affirmed or denied
about that topic. Thus the subject of the topic sentence is
the subject and its focus is expressed in the predicate
together with its complements or objects and/or its
adverbial modifiers.

4. 1) The heart is no bigger than a good-sized fist. 2) It
weighs less than a pound, and its shape resembles the
popular Valentine image sufficiently to satisfy the
sentimentalists. 3) It lies pointed downward, in the chest
cavity, at about mid-center body line. 4) The wall of the
heart are of thick muscle, twisted in to rings, whorls and
loops. 5) Within them are four hollow chambers: a left and
a right receiving chamber, or atrium, and below them a left
and a right pumping chamber, or ventricle. 6) In the right
atrium is the sinus node – a minute blob with a mammoth
job. 7) Composed of special, nerve-like muscle tissue found
nowhere else in the body, the sinus node starts the
heartbeat and sets its pace, much like the coxswain of a
racing shell.
-Life Editors

5.  The topic sentence may either be explicit (expressed
and identifiable) or implied (not expressed but
suggested in the discussion of the entire paragraph.
 An explicit topic sentence may occur in any of the
following positions in the paragraph: beginning, end,
middle, or distributed between the first sentence and
one or some of the succeeding sentences.
 An implied topic sentence, because unexpressed, has to
be drawn from the entire paragraph. The reader has to
state it for himself.

6.  While it expresses the key idea of the paragraph, the topic
sentence is also performing any one of the speech acts.
Thus a topic sentence could also be initiating or
terminating, directing or inferring, etc.
 All the other sentences in a paragraph, besides (1)
conveying its propositional content, is also (2) performing
a speech act in itself. But, because each sentence is part of
the context of the entire paragraph, it also contributes to the
enlargement of the main idea. Sentences within a
paragraph, therefore, function in certain ways in their
relation to each other and to the meaning of the paragraph.
We shall call these their (3) contextual function.

7.  As INTRODUCER – the sentence may bring to
the attention of the reader the topic of the
paragraph, provide an introductory background,
such as time or place setting in descriptive and
narrative paragraphs. It may even pose a
question.

8. 1) The heart is no bigger than a good-sized fist. 2) It
weighs less than a pound, and its shape resembles the
popular Valentine image sufficiently to satisfy the
sentimentalists. 3) It lies pointed downward, in the chest
cavity, at about mid-center body line. 4) The wall of the
heart are of thick muscle, twisted in to rings, whorls and
loops. 5) Within them are four hollow chambers: a left and a
right receiving chamber, or atrium, and below them a left
and a right pumping chamber, or ventricle. 6) In the right
atrium is the sinus node – a minute blob with a mammoth
job. 7) Composed of special, nerve-like muscle tissue found
nowhere else in the body, the sinus node starts the heartbeat
and sets its pace, much like the coxswain of a racing shell.
-Life Editors

9.  The DEVELOPER sentence expands and
develops the key idea. Developer sentences
perform the speech act appropriate to their
contextual function. Some of these are
describing details or characteristics, providing
examples, bringing in evidence, listing items,
etc. Most of the sentences of a paragraph
function contextually as developers.

10. 1) The heart is no bigger than a good-sized fist. 2) It
weighs less than a pound, and its shape resembles the
popular Valentine image sufficiently to satisfy the
sentimentalists. 3) It lies pointed downward, in the chest
cavity, at about mid-center body line. 4) The wall of the
heart are of thick muscle, twisted in to rings, whorls and
loops. 5) Within them are four hollow chambers: a left and a
right receiving chamber, or atrium, and below them a left
and a right pumping chamber, or ventricle. 6) In the right
atrium is the sinus node – a minute blob with a mammoth
job. 7) Composed of special, nerve-like muscle tissue found
nowhere else in the body, the sinus node starts the heartbeat
and sets its pace, much like the coxswain of a racing shell.
-Life Editors

11.  EXTENDER sentences provide elaboration of ideas that
are part of preceding developer sentences. They
contribute, not directly to the central idea, but rather
directly to the developer sentence, a detail of which may
need clarification or enlargement. It may sometimes
happen that these extenders are followed, in turn, by
other sentences that explain ideas in these extenders,
which we might designate as AMPLIFIERS. Sentences
like these, however, rarely occur.

12. 1) The heart is no bigger than a good-sized fist. 2) It
weighs less than a pound, and its shape resembles the
popular Valentine image sufficiently to satisfy the
sentimentalists. 3) It lies pointed downward, in the chest
cavity, at about mid-center body line. 4) The wall of the
heart are of thick muscle, twisted in to rings, whorls and
loops. 5) Within them are four hollow chambers: a left and a
right receiving chamber, or atrium, and below them a left
and a right pumping chamber, or ventricle. 6) In the right
atrium is the sinus node – a minute blob with a mammoth
job. 7) Composed of special, nerve-like muscle tissue found
nowhere else in the body, the sinus node starts the heartbeat
and sets its pace, much like the coxswain of a racing shell.
-Life Editors

13. MODULATORS mark transitions or shifts in
the discussion underway. They may also bring
in side comments on the writer’s attitude
toward what he is saying or toward the way in
which he is communicating his idea.
Occasionally, modulator sentences perform the
act of retrieving.

14.  1) Nothing more clearly illustrates the vast range that physics
has claimed as its own than the work of two men. 2) Sanborn Brown
is concerned with plasma physics, involving the so-called fourth
state of matter --- a mass of super-excited, electrically charged
particles at extremely high temperatures (the sun and stars are
composed of plasma). 3) Stanford’s William M. Fairbank, on the
other hand, is devoted to the opposite end of the temperature
spectrum --- the field of cryogenics, which deals with cold in the
neighborhood of absolute zero. 4) Though seemingly opposite to
each other, the work of these two men is curiously intertwined. 5) In
Brown’s specialty, a crucial problem is the confinement of plasmas so
hot that no container yet devised can hold them. 6) Oddly, studies
of cold may provide the answer. 7) Fairbank is using powerful
cryogenic magnets which may be able to contain plasmas within
their fields without direct contact with them. 8) “If so”, says
Fairbank, “we will have reached the ultimate absurdity of science, a
‘bottle’ --- 269°C cold, to contain a process involving millions of
degrees of heat.
- Life Editors

15. RESTATER sentences rephrase the idea
expressed in a preceding sentence for emphasis,
or reformulate earlier sentences to make the
meaning unmistakable.

16.  1) Just as science provides us with the clearest examples
of informative discourse, so poetry furnishes us the best
examples of language serving an expressive function. 2) The
following lines of Burns:
O my Luve’s like a red, red rose
That’s newly spring in June:
O my Luve’s like the melodie
That’s sweetly play’d in tune!
are definitely not intended to inform us of any facts or
theories concerning the world. 3) The poet’s purpose is to
communicate not knowledge but feelings and attributes. 4)
The passage was not written to report any information but to
express certain emotions that the poet felt very keenly and to
evoke feelings of a similar kind in the reader. 5) Language
serves the expressive function whenever it is used to vent or
communicate feelings or emotions.
- Irving M. Copi

17.  As TERMINATORS, sentences conclude the ideas in the
paragraph and bring it to a close. The terminator of a carefully
enveloped paragraph logically clenches it in a number of ways.
If the purpose of the paragraph is to present proof inductively,
the terminator is a generalization which may also function as
the topic sentence. The terminator could also be an emphatic
affirming of the key idea in the form of a restatement of the
topic sentence. It may be a narration of the last step or stage in
a process. It may be the response to an inquiry posed earlier in
the paragraph. Some paragraphs without clear-cut terminators
point out their immediate connection with the following
paragraph.

18.  1) Although most of us can occasionally retain visual
impressions of things we have seen, such impressions
usually are vague and lacking in detail. 2) Some individuals,
however, are able to retain visual images that are almost
photographic in clarity. 3) They can glance briefly at a
picture and when it is removed still “see” its image located,
not in their heads, but somewhere in space before their eyes.
4) They can maintain the image for as long as several
minutes, scan it as it remains stationary in space, and
describe it in far more detail than would be possible from
memory alone. 5) Such people are said to have a
“photographic memory”, or, to use the psychologist’s term,
eidetic imagery.
-Ernest R. Hilgard,
Richard C. Atkinson,
and Rita L. Atkinson

19.  Alongside each paragraph are three columns provided for
the analysis of the sentences. The analysis involves
identifying the speech act (column 1), the contextual
function (column 2), and the prepositional content (column
3) of each sentence.
 A careful survey of the contextual functions in relation to the
speech acts will yield the characterizing attributes that make
up the essence of each paragraph move, like the developer
sentences of the describing and defining moves would talk
about attributes, aspects, or meanings; those of the narrating
move would present events; those of the classifying move,
categories or groupings, and so on.

20.  1) The heart is no
bigger than a good-sized
fist. 2) It weighs
less than a pound, and
its shape resembles the
popular Valentine
image sufficiently to
satisfy the
sentimentalists. 3) It
lies pointed downward,
in the chest cavity, at
about mid-center body
line. 4) The wall of the
heart are of thick
muscle, twisted in to
rings, whorls and loops.
Speech Act Contextual
Function
Proposit-ional
Content
Describing Introducer Size,
Comparison
Specifying
Describing
Developer
(Attribute)
Weight,
Shape,
Comparison
Specifying Developer
(Attribute)
Location
Describing Developer
(Attribute)
Material

21. 5) Within them are four
hollow chambers: a left and
a right receiving chamber, or
atrium, and below them a
left and a right pumping
chamber, or ventricle. 6) In
the right atrium is the sinus
node – a minute blob with a
mammoth job. 7)
Composed of special, nerve-like
muscle tissue found
nowhere else in the body,
the sinus node starts the
heartbeat and sets its pace,
much like the coxswain of a
racing shell.
-Life Editors
Speech Act Contextual
Function
Proposit-ional
Content
Analyzing
Naming
Developer
(Attribute)
Parts
Names
Specifying
Describing
Developer
(Attribute)
Location
Character-istic
Describing Extender
(Attribute)
(Function)
Composit-ion
Function
Comparison

22.  1) Although most of
us can occasionally retain
visual impressions of
things we have seen, such
impressions usually are
vague and lacking in
detail. 2) Some individuals,
however, are able to retain
visual images that are
almost photographic in
clarity. 3) They can glance
briefly at a picture and
when it is removed still
“see” its image located, not
in their heads, but
somewhere in space before
their eyes.
Speech Act Contextual
Function
Proposit-ional
Content
Conceding Introducer Ability
Character-istic
Contrast
Particular-izing
Extender to
#1
Developer
(Attribute)
Ability
Contrast
Describing Developer
(Attribute)
Ability

23.  4) They can maintain the
image for as long as several
minutes, scan it as it
remains stationary in space,
and describe it in far more
detail than would be
possible from memory
alone. 5) Such people are
said to have a “photographic
memory”, or, to use the
psychologist’s term, eidetic
imagery.
-Ernest R. Hilgard,
Richard C. Atkinson,
and Rita L. Atkinson
Speech Act Contextual
Function
Proposit-ional
Content
Describing Developer
(Attribute)
Ability
Naming -Terminator
-Topic
Sentence
Name/Label

24.  4) Man is gigantic in
comparison with an
electron, an atom, a
molecule or a microbe.
5) But, when compared
with the mountain, or
with the earth, he is tiny.
6) More than four
thousand individuals
would have to stand one
upon the other in order
to equal the height of
Mount Everest.
Speech Act Contextual
Function
Proposit-ional
Content
Inferring Re-stater
Comparison
Size
Describing -Developer
-2nd
Comparison
Size
Contrast
Hypothesiz-ing
-Extender of
#5
-Comparison
(Implied)
Length
Necessity
Equation
Length