Olga T. Yokoyama

Olga Tsuneko Yokoyama (Russian Ольга Борисовна Йокояма, born September 11, 1942) is a Distinguished Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA).

She also reviews the studies on Topic and comment by the Prague School: the works of V. Mathesius, F. Daneš, P. Sgall, E. Hajicova, J. Firbas, and P. Adamec without mentioning the earlier sources such as G. v.d.

[2] TDM represents verbal communication process between two people, in terms of transaction of seven kinds of knowledge, which Yokoyama graphically displays by using a Venn diagram.

[4] Yokoyama’s analysis is unique in its empirical and well-constructed support to the formal representation of multiple interrelated factors: the knowledge sets of the interlocutors and matters of their current concerns.

[2] By examining those minimal units of informal discourse situations, Yokoyama makes it possible to formulate rules governing the intentional transaction of knowledge between conversation partners and apply them to specific examples of modern Russian language.

[9] Most of the letters were addressed to Yokoyama's grandfather Vasiliy Zhernakov, who in 1881, at the age of 17, left home in the former Vyatka Province for Siberia to earn money and eventually became a successful merchant and philanthropist.

Yokoyama recognized that this is a valuable source for studying the language and economic conditions of common people in Russia in the late 19th century.