Inferentials in spoken English

Although there is a growing body of research on inferential sentences (Declerck 1992, Delahunty 1990, 1995, 2001, Koops 2007, Pusch 2006), most of this research has been on their forms and functions in written discourse. This has left a gap with regards to their range of structural properties and allowed disagreement over their analysis to linger without a conclusive resolution. Most accounts regard the inferential as a type of it-cleft (Declerck 1992, Delahunty 2001, Huddleston and Pullum 2002, Lambrecht 2001), while a few view it as an instance of extraposition (Collins 1991, Schmid 2009). More recently, Pusch's work in Romance languages proposes the inferential is used as a discourse marker (2006, forthcoming). Based on a corpus study of examples from spoken New Zealand English, the current paper provides a detailed analysis of the formal and discoursal properties of several sub-types of inferentials (positive, negative, as if and like inferentials). We show that despite their apparent formal differences from the prototypical cleft, inferentials are nevertheless best analysed as a type of cleft, though this requires a minor reinterpretation of “cleft construction.” We show how similar the contextualized interpretations of clefts and inferentials are and how these are a function of their lexis and syntax

The Bible and the Liturgical Movement: Scripture as a Voice in the Church, Not a Book Faxed to It

(Excerpt) I want to begin by telling you my own personal connection with the liturgical movement. It happened way back when I was twenty-one years old and entered seminary in 1946. Those were the bad old days when you went through high school, college, seminary, ordination, and under after that. Actually, we are recognizing they were in some ways the good old days, too, because we got a lot of service out of some of those types who started early and who maybe even learned something along the way

Testimony, recovery and plausible deniability: A response to Peet

According to telling based views of testimony (TBVs), B has reason to believe that p when A tells B that p because A thereby takes public responsibility for B's subsequent belief that p. Andrew Peet presents a new argument against TBVs. He argues that insofar as A uses context-sensitive expressions to express p, A doesn't take public responsibility for B's belief that p. Since context-sensitivity is widespread, the kind of reason TBVs say we have to believe what we're told, is not widespread. Peet doesn't identify any problem with his own argument though he does attempt to limit its sceptical potential by identifying special contexts in which TBVs stand a chance of success. A more general defence of TBVs can be provided by showing Peet's argument to be unsound. I argue that Peet's argument is unsound because it requires us to wrongly suppose that speakers do far less labour than their audiences in context-sensitive linguistic communication. I aim to show why—in the context of the epistemology of testimony and the philosophy of language—it's important to recognize the labour that speakers can do, and so can can be held responsible for not doing, in episodes of context-sensitive linguistic communication

Purpose (Chapter Two of My Best Advice: Proven Rules for Effective Leadership)

Think about how you spent the past day, week, or even month. Why did you spend it that way? Why did you invest your time the way you did? Did you go to work? Why do you go to work every day? Did you go to your daughter\u27s recital or your son\u27s play? Why? Did you get some exercise? Did you take your partner to lunch? Did you go to the neighborhood barbecue? Why? On the surface, our answers to these questions may be simple: I go to work to make money so I can pay my bills and support a certain lifestyle for my family. I go to my kids\u27 events to support them. I love my partner. I enjoy spending time with my neighbors. There may be deeper drivers for each of these decisions as well

Seeking to Understand Subaru’s Turbocharged Appeal: A study of brand communities, product utility, and corporate promotion

This study attempts to analyze Subaru’s significant and unique appeal in the greater automotive market. The primary research findings are presented in a video documentary, while frameworks for existing research on certain facets of brand management and consumer groups are presented in the following paper. Based on analysis of existing data and interviews conducted with people connected to the brand, we can conclude that the phenomenon is a result of an appealing product that offers differentiated utilities at an affordable price, the formation of consumer groups around the various offerings, and insightful promotion on Subaru’s part. The degree to which each of these factors is responsible for cultivating a following varies based on the consumer group; the convergence of these three phenomena is, if not unique in the vehicle marketplace, very distinctive

Television and children: developmentally harmful or educationally beneficial?

Includes bibliographical references

Information structure and the accessibility of clausally introduced referents

This paper will examine the role of various factors in affecting the salience, and hence the accessibility to pronominal reference, of entities introduced into a discourse by a full clause. We begin with the premise that the possibility of pronominal reference with it versus that depends on the cognitive status of the referent, in the sense of Gundel, Hedberg and Zacharski (1993). This formulation of the problem provides grounds for an explanation of the data presented above, and provides a framework within which we examine the role of various other factors in promoting the salience of a clausally introduced entity, including the information structure of the utterance in which the entity is introduced. For entities introduced by clausal complements to bridge verbs, we show that the information structure of the utterance introducing the entity has a partial, or one-sided, effect on the salience of the entity. When the complement clause is focal, the salience of the entity depends only on its referential givenness-newness (in the sense of Gundel 1988, 1999b), as we would expect. But when the complement clause is ground material, the salience of an entity introduced by the clause is enhanced. Other factors, including the presuppositionality of factive and interrogative complements, also serve to enhance the salience of entities introduced by complement clauses

Transcript of keynote speech, "Don't Lecture Me"

Keynote speech given by Donald Clark at “Into something rich and strange” – making sense of the sea-change, the 2010 Association for Learning Technology Conference in Nottingham, England. In the chair, Vanessa Pittard, Bect