Discourse analysis attempts to identify and describe the semantic relationships among units of thought larger than a word (predications). Two basic types of these relationships exist between predications, conceptual and nonconceptual. A conceptual relationship exists between two predications when they share a concept or when a concept in one refers to a set of concepts (or the whole predication) in another. Conceptual relationships are signaled by the following references: same word, pronoun, synonym, metaphoric, wh-word, deleted subject, related concept, and whole predication. As the name implies, nonconceptual relationships do not require a shared concept between predications. There are five types of nonconceptual relationships: (1) causal, (2) contrastive, (3) additive, (4) temporal, and (5) embedded. The techniques of discourse analysis can be applied to language research and measurement to determine if there is a relationship between age and the use of conceptual and nonconceptual relationships, and to examine differences in these relationships across different modes of discourse. In language instruction, the overt teaching of the relationships could help increase language proficiency. Because they use signal words, nonconceptual relationships lend themselves particularly well to instructional use. (JL)