DUPLE (C2) cheat sheet

Grice's maxims (quality, quantity, relation, manner) describe default expectations; a deliberate flout generates a conversational implicature rather than a literal meaning.

Given/new information structure: sentence-initial position typically carries given (presupposed) information, sentence-final position carries new or focused information.

Inferencing types: bridging (linking an anaphor to an antecedent), elaborative (adding world knowledge), and causal (establishing why/how links between events).

Lexical cohesion (repetition, synonymy, hyponymy, collocation) is a stronger comprehension cue than grammatical cohesion alone when connectives are absent.

Presupposition triggers include factive verbs (regret, realize), definite descriptions, change-of-state verbs (stop, begin), and cleft constructions; the trigger survives under negation.

Entailment is a truth-conditional relation (if A is true, B must be true); implicature is cancellable and defeasible, so it is never an entailment.

Skimming targets gist via topic sentences and headings; scanning targets specific form (numbers, names) and bypasses sequential reading.

Anaphora resolution rule: prefer the most recent compatible antecedent, but semantic number/gender agreement and world knowledge override recency.

Paragraph unity test: every sentence must support the topic sentence; delete any sentence whose removal leaves the argument intact.

Given-new progression across sentences (old information first, new information last) is the main device producing readable academic prose.

Nominalization raises register and density but hides agency; agentless passives are appropriate only when the agent is unknown, irrelevant, or deliberately suppressed.

Cohesive chains should alternate reference types (pronoun, definite NP, synonym) to avoid both ambiguity and mechanical repetition.

Hedging scale: may < might < could < suggests < indicates < demonstrates; choose the weakest verb the evidence supports.

Sentence-length control: a clause count above three per sentence usually signals a needed split; average 15-25 words suits expository prose.

Editing passes are separable: content/argument, then structure, then paragraph, then sentence, then mechanics; mixing them causes rework.

Subject-verb agreement is resolved by the head noun, not the nearest noun: 'The list of items is long'; 'A number of items are missing' vs 'The number of items is rising'.

Restrictive relative clauses take no comma and allow 'that'; non-restrictive clauses take commas and disallow 'that'.

Dangling modifier rule: an introductory participial phrase must share its subject with the main clause subject.

Subjunctive after mandative verbs and adjectives (insist, demand, essential) takes the base form: 'insist that he be present'.

Conditional sequence: zero (present/present), first (present/will), second (past/would), third (past perfect/would have), mixed (past perfect/would).

Comparative and superlative: two-item comparison takes -er/more, three or more takes -est/most; 'than' for comparatives, 'of/in' for superlatives.

Collective nouns (team, government) take singular verbs in formal usage but allow plural when the members act individually.

Collocation is arbitrary and must be learned in chunks: 'heavy rain', 'strong tea', 'make a decision', 'take measures'.

Register tiers of near-synonyms: ask/request/solicit; get/obtain/acquire; help/assist/facilitate - the Latinate form raises formality.

False friends and confusables: 'economic/economical', 'historic/historical', 'comprise/compose' (the whole comprises the parts; the parts compose the whole).

Productive vs receptive knowledge: a word is productive only if its collocational and grammatical frames are known, not just its meaning.

Precision over synonymy: 'increase' is neutral; 'surge' implies speed and scale; 'proliferate' implies multiplication of instances.

Idioms are non-compositional and fixed in form and article: 'in the long run', 'on the whole', 'by and large'.

Word-formation cues: prefixes (mal-, mis-, over-) signal evaluative meaning; suffixes (-ness, -ity, -ment) signal nominalization and register shift.

Halliday-Hasan cohesion types: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion; cohesion is surface, coherence is underlying relevance.

Theme-rheme: the theme is the clause-initial element and anchors the message; marked themes (fronted adverbials, clefts) signal emphasis or contrast.

Topical progression patterns: constant theme, linear (rheme becomes next theme), and derived (hyponymic split from a hypertheme).

Substitution uses pro-forms (one, do, so, not); ellipsis omits the item entirely - both reduce repetition without adding content.

Conjunction categories: additive, adversative, causal, temporal; misclassifying adversative as causal is the commonest cohesion error.

Genre move structure: academic abstract = background, gap, aim, method, result, conclusion; deviation signals a rhetorical problem.

Information density rises with nominalization and premodification; readability falls when noun phrases exceed three premodifiers.

Politeness strategies: bald on-record, positive politeness (solidarity), negative politeness (imposition hedging), off-record (hint); choose by power, distance, and imposition rank.

Deixis is context-bound: person (I/you), place (here), time (now), and discourse deixis (the former, as follows) shift meaning with the utterance context.

Speech acts: locution (what is said), illocution (the act performed), perlocution (the effect); 'Can you...?' is conventionally an indirect request, not a question about ability.

Register variables are field, tenor, and mode; a shift in any one requires lexical and syntactic adjustment throughout the text.

Face-threatening acts (requests, criticism, refusal) call for mitigation: hedges, impersonalization, or an apology-plus-reason frame.

Formality markers: contraction avoidance, Latinate lexis, nominalization, impersonal subjects, and no phrasal verbs in formal written registers.

Implicature cancellation ('but I'm not suggesting...') confirms a pragmatic rather than semantic inference was drawn.

Equivalence levels: word-for-word (interlinear), literal, dynamic/functional, and communicative; choose the highest level compatible with the skopos (purpose).

Transposition changes word class (noun to verb); modulation changes viewpoint ('no entry' to 'keep out'); both are default micro-strategies.

Explicitation adds implicit connectives or subjects required by the target language; implicitation removes redundancy the target tolerates.

Compensation relocates an effect (pun, register, rhythm) elsewhere in the text when it cannot be reproduced in place.

False-friend check and back-translation are verification tools for terminology; back-translation tests sense, not style.

Cultural substitution vs. borrowing: substitute when the function matters, borrow plus gloss when the referent is specific and untranslatable.

Mediation tasks (summary, paraphrase, relay) require re-centering on the target reader's needs, not on source-text form.