West Flemish verb-based discourse markers and the articulation of the Speech Act layer

This paper focuses on the West Flemish discourse markers located at the edge of the clause. After a brief survey of the distribution of discourse markers in WF, the paper proposes a syntactic analysis of the discourse markers ne and we. Based on the distribution of these discourse markers, of vocatives and of dislocated DPs, an articulated speech act layer is elaborated which corroborates the proposals in Hill (). It is postulated that there is a syntactic relation between particles used as discourse markers and vocatives. The paper offers further support for the grammaticalization of pragmatic features at the interface between syntax and discourse and for the hypothesis that the relevant computation at the interface is of the same nature as that in Narrow Syntax

The modal particle ma 嘛: theoretical frames, analysis and interpretive perspectives

This article sets out to provide a semantic and pragmatic account of the modal particle ma 嘛, endeavouring to put into light new aspects in its function which, at present, remain widely unexplored in the literature. It presents an analysis of the particle ma by interrogating a written and a spoken corpus, showing how the semantic and the pragmatic levels are tightly interweaved in the functioning of ma: the results supported my hypothesis that the particle is plausibly a marker of interpersonal evidentiality (IE), a category set up by Tantucci (2013), used to signal a socially acknowledged piece of information, playing a fundamental role in the expression of politeness by safeguarding the interlocutors’ face; consequently, ma is always used with information that has an active or accessible status in the interlocutors’ mind and that is always pragmatically salient, independently of its position (at the end or inside the sentence), marking a Topic or a Focus. The particle performs pragmatic functions close to the ones of discourse markers since it increases the relevance of the marked information to the context, therefore also playing a contributing role in the coherence of discourse

ἔγραψέ μοι γάρ ... τὰ νῦν οὖν γράφω σοι. οὖν and γάρ as inferential and elaborative discourse markers in Greek papyrus letters (I – IV AD)

I analyse the use of the particles οὖν and γάρ in a corpus of documentary texts ranging from the first to the fourth century AD. I attempt to answer three main research questions: (i) with what frequency are οὖν and γάρ used; was one of these particles used more frequently than the other?; (ii) what are the functional/syntactic similarities and differences between the two particles; (iii) are there signs of functional development? My observations are framed within ‘discourse marker theory’, whereby οὖν and γάρ are viewed as ‘inferential’ and ‘elaborative’ discourse markers

Stance-taking and public discussion in blogs.

Blogs, which can be written and read by anyone with a computer and an internet connection, would seem to expand the possibilities for engagement in public sphere debates. Indeed, blogs are full of the kind of vocabulary that suggests intense discussion. However, a closer look at the way this vocabulary is used in context suggests that the main concern of writers is selfpresentation, positioning themselves in a crowded forum, in what has been called stancetaking. When writers mark their stances, for instance by saying I think, they enact different ways of signalling a relation to others, marking disagreement, enacting surprise, andironicising previous contributions. All these moves are ways of presenting one’s own contribution as distinctive, showing one’s entitlement to a position. In this paper, I use concordance tools to identify strings that are very frequent in a corpus of blogs, relative to a general corpus of written texts, focus on those relatively frequent words that mark stance and analyse these markers in context. I argue that the prominence of stance-taking indicates the priority of individual positioning over collective and deliberative discussion

Parenthetical 'I say (you)' in Late Medieval Greek vernacular: a message structuring discourse marker rather than a message conveying verb

In this paper, I argue that the first-person singular of the "ordinary" verb lambda epsilon gamma omega/lambda alpha lambda(omega) over tilde ('I say') in the thirteenth-to fourteenth-century political verse narratives Chronicle of Morea and War of Troy does not always carry its "normal", representational content ('I inform/assure [you]'). Frequently, lambda epsilon gamma omega/lambda alpha lambda(omega) over tilde structures the discourse rather than conveying conceptual meaning and, thus, has procedural meaning. In this respect, the verb can be compared to modern discourse markers (i.e., semantically reduced items which abound in spoken language). An important-yet not decisive-criterion to distinguish the conceptual from the procedural use is the position of lambda epsilon gamma omega/lambda alpha lambda(omega) over tilde: all "DM-like" examples are parenthetical. As for their precise pragmatic function, these forms are used, in particular, to signal a clarification towards the listener ("I mean") or, more generally, to grab the attention of the audience. Applied to the modern binary distinction between interpersonal and textual discourse markers, they thus belong to the former category. Finally, I tentatively relate the observation that the procedural parenthetical examples show a marked preference for pre-caesural position to the concept of "filled pauses", which makes sense given the adopted oral style of the Late Medieval Greek political verse narratives

Towards a constructional approach to discourse-level phenomena : the case of the Spanish interpersonal epistemic stance construction

This study contributes to a better understanding of how constructional models can be applied to discourse-level phenomena, and constitute a valuable complementation to previous grammaticalization accounts of pragmatic markers. The case study that is presented concerns the recent development of the interpersonal epistemic stance construction in Spanish. The central argument is that the expanding use of sabes as a pragmatic marker can best be fully understood by taking into account the composite network of related expressions which Spanish speakers have at their disposal when performing a particular speech act. The diachronic analysis is documented with spoken corpus examples collected in recent decades, and is mainly informed by frequency data measuring the productivity, as well as formal properties of the construction and its instances

The syntax of orientation shifting: Evidence from English high adverbs

This paper reviews new data supporting the inclusion of a Speech Act Phrase in the left periphery. Illocutionary and evidential adverbs in English shift orientation from speakers in declarative sentences to addressees in yes-no interrogative sentences. This orientation shift falls out of independently motivated principles: the adverbs contain a logophorically-sensitive PRO subject which is controlled by a syntactic representation of the discourse participants contained in a Speech Act Phrase high in the CP layer. It will be suggested that clause type modulates which discourse participants are available; only speakers are available in declaratives whereas addressees are also available in interrogatives

Prosody as an argument for a layered left periphery

Van Heuven and Haan’s (2000, 2002) experimental work on the prosody of Dutch question types found that the prosodic signalling of interrogativity is stronger for declarative questions, less so for yes/no-questions and even less so for wh-questions. This paper shows how the sequence established on prosodic grounds (declarative questions > yes/no questions > wh questions > statements) is mirrored in the functional hierarchy in syntax. Prosody therefore provides an argument for a detailed left periphery (Rizzi 1997, 2001; Haegeman & Hill 2013)

The Many Functions of Discourse Particles: A Computational Model of Pragmatic Interpretation

We present a connectionist model for the interpretation of discourse\ud particles in real dialogues that is based on neuronal\ud principles of categorization (categorical perception, prototype\ud formation, contextual interpretation). It can be shown that\ud discourse particles operate just like other morphological and\ud lexical items with respect to interpretation processes. The description\ud proposed locates discourse particles in an elaborate\ud model of communication which incorporates many different\ud aspects of the communicative situation. We therefore also\ud attempt to explore the content of the category discourse particle.\ud We present a detailed analysis of the meaning assignment\ud problem and show that 80%– 90% correctness for unseen discourse\ud particles can be reached with the feature analysis provided.\ud Furthermore, we show that ‘analogical transfer’ from\ud one discourse particle to another is facilitated if prototypes\ud are computed and used as the basis for generalization. We\ud conclude that the interpretation processes which are a part of\ud the human cognitive system are very similar with respect to\ud different linguistic items. However, the analysis of discourse\ud particles shows clearly that any explanatory theory of language\ud needs to incorporate a theory of communication processes

Evidentiality in Dena'ina Athabaskan

Dena'ina evidentials are enclitics with a complex paradigmatic morphology. Their first component varies with person, while the second com- ponent varies with animacy and number, thus marking source and nature of knowledge. Although evidentiality in Dena'ina is not coded as an obligatory inflectional category on the verb, it is also not scattered throughout the gram- mar. The existence of an incipient inflectional evidential system demonstrates the ability of Athabaskan languages to innovate morphological structures outside the verb. The uniqueness of the Dena'ina system demonstrates the heterogeneity of Athabaskan grammar beyond the verb word