Proposals in meeting minutes: An English-Spanish corpus-based study

Abstract

This paper provides an analysis of the lexico-grammatical features used in English and Spanish in the rhetorical part pertaining to the proposal step of a particular genre, meeting minutes . The results have been used in the construction of a computerized writing aid designed to assist Spanish writers when writing minutes in English. Corpus-based contrast reveals that minutes share a common rhetorical structure but show differences in the lexico-grammatical choices associated with the various rhetorical parts. Proposals are conveyed both in English and Spanish by means of lexical verbs, deverbal constructions and certain clause types. Cross-linguistic differences are in the choice of tense, mood and voice. The analysis also suggests different degrees of conventionalization of these resources in the two languages. Results form part of a linguistic prototype that includes three main components: rhetorical information in Spanish, grammatical strings in English and bilingual genre/move restricted glossaries.