On marked declaratives, exclamatives, and discourse particles in Castilian Spanish

This book provides a new perspective on prosodically marked declaratives, wh-exclamatives, and discourse particles in the Madrid variety of Spanish. It argues that some marked forms differ from unmarked forms in that they encode modal evaluations of the at-issue meaning. Two epistemic evaluations that can be shown to be encoded by intonation in Spanish are linguistically encoded surprise, or mirativity, and obviousness. An empirical investigation via an audio-enhanced production experiment finds that mirativity and obviousness are associated with distinct intonational features under constant focus scope, with stances of (dis)agreement showing an impact on obvious declaratives. Wh-exclamatives are found not to differ significantly in intonational marking from neutral declaratives, showing that they need not be miratives. Moreover, we find that intonational marking on different discourse particles in natural dialogue correlates with their meaning contribution without being fully determined by it. In part, these findings quantitatively confirm previous qualitative findings on the meaning of intonational configurations in Madrid Spanish. But they also add new insights on the role intonation plays in the negotiation of commitments and expectations between interlocutors

The prosody of interrogatives at transition-relevance places in Mandarin Chinese conversation

This study aims to address the issue of the extent to which prosody contributes to projecting possible turn endings in Mandarin Chinese conversation. The research specifically focuses on the realization of the pitch contour of the final syllable in yes/no questions, based on a small scale of study of eight map-task-type conversations. The examination of 62 ma-particle yes/no questions and 75 yes/no questions with the construction of ‘A-not-A’ or ‘Copula-NEG’ suggests falling intonation is the most prominent pitch contour in yes/no questions at ends of turns in map-task-type conversations in Mandarin Chinese. The analysis of my data has also shown that the yes/no interrogative might have a terminal level, and they may end in rising and falling. Another finding is that the underlying tone of the last toned syllable plays a crucial role on the surface of the final pitch movement of yes/no interrogatives ending with toned syllables. On the basis of this finding, inspection of the turn-final declarative demonstrates that the same final pitch patterns displayed in the ‘A-not-A’ interrogatives ending with toned syllables exist in the turn-final declaratives in my data. This research suggests that prosody plays a restricted role in projecting possible transition relevance places in Mandarin Chinese conversation, since prosody, particularly pitch, may be primarily used to differentiate meaning at the lexical level. Despite the limited number of participants and recorded conversations, these findings might not only contribute to the study of the role of prosody in conversation in general, but also provide some insights into the final pitch movement of the yes/no question in Mandarin Chinese

Advances in the Analysis of Spanish Exclamatives

'Advances in the Analysis of Spanish Exclamatives' is the first book entirely devoted to Spanish exclamatives, a special sentence type often overlooked by contemporary linguists and neglected in standard grammatical descriptions. The seven essays in this volume, each by a leading specialist on the topic, scrutinize the syntax, as well as the semantic and pragmatic aspects, of exclamations on theoretical grounds. The book begins by summarizing, commenting on, and evaluating previous descriptive and theoretical contributions on Spanish exclamatives. This introductory overview also contains a detailed classification of Spanish exclamative grammatical types, along with an analysis of their main properties