Beschreibung:
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>This paper addresses the question of what governs the optional attendance of the determiner <jats:italic>this</jats:italic> by a noun phrase in academic student writing. Previous research on <jats:italic>this</jats:italic> has largely focused on the noun phrases accompanying <jats:italic>this</jats:italic>, while the question of what determines writers' choice between attended and unattended <jats:italic>this</jats:italic> in the first place has received only little attention. In the present study, we present the results of a more comprehensive analysis, including quantitative methods (logistic regression analysis, Distinctive Collexeme Analysis, textual distribution measures) and qualitative methods (cluster extraction), of more than 5,800 hits of sentence-initial <jats:italic>this</jats:italic> obtained from the <jats:italic>Michigan Corpus of Upper Level Student Papers</jats:italic> (MICUSP). Overall, the results point to a strong influence of the verb accompanying (un)attended <jats:italic>this</jats:italic>, which is moderated to some extent by author-related variables like academic discipline, academic proficiency level, native speaker status, and gender. A qualitative pattern analysis of the most prominent <jats:italic>this</jats:italic> + verb clusters reveals that semantic biases evidenced in the verbs distinctively associated with (un)attended <jats:italic>this</jats:italic> are reflected at the text-organizational level in terms of positional preferences within paragraphs and texts. In combination, the results point towards an ongoing delexicalization of <jats:italic>this</jats:italic> + verb clusters like <jats:italic>this</jats:italic> is and <jats:italic>this means</jats:italic> into textual organization markers, which stands in sharp contrast to traditional cautions against unattended <jats:italic>this</jats:italic> as mere “vague reference” that is to be avoided.</jats:p>