the conversation partner B) Five kinds of informational knowledge: Referential knowledge – the ability to connect linguistic representation to term. The sentence “I spoke to Jane Smith” is evidence for the fact that A has referential knowledge of Jane Smith. Propositional knowledge – knowledge that some event happened. Specificational knowledge – enables the speaker to replace an unspecified term with a specified term. Existential knowledge – the assumption that that person or place does exist; however there is no specificational knowledge of this person or a place. Predicational knowledge – presupposed by the question “What happened?” and connected to propositional knowledge “Something happened”. It implies predicative and existential knowledge of the terms. In addition, Yokoyama proposes four minimal units of the discourse model: the set of knowledge of the speaker (A); the set of knowledge of the addressee (B); the area of present concern of the speaker (Ca); and the area of present concern of the addressee (Cb). These units undergo changes during the communication process as the transaction of seven kinds of knowledge occurs. TDM presupposes conditions for successful communication: the area of present concern of the speaker and the area of the present concern of the addressee should intersect (Ca∩Cb), i.e. the intersection is not empty, not a null-set. However, it is possible that Ca contains the information that is not within B’s current concern Cb, therefore the imposition of A’s concern will take place, due to the wrong assessment of the discourse situation. Imposition may be seen as a dominating or even aggressive behaviour. Thus TDM explains why people try to minimize imposition on people they don’t know at all, or don’t know well enough. 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. 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. Publications Over the years of her career Yokoyama has published articles in various journals in the U.S. and internationally and presented at conferences in US, Asia and Europe. The topics cover discourse grammar, gender linguistics, Russian intonation, and analysis of literary language, and the language of the 19th century Russian peasants' correspondence. Russian Peasant Letters Yokoyama's book