Gramàtica, interacció i organització informativa en el discurs oral

This article deals with some grammar aspects of oral language, which includes an extense sense of the concept of grammar itself. The linguistic characteristics of orality are studied in relation to the physical, cognitive and sociopragmatic factors that intervene in speech’s production and reception. The specific grammatical elements that are presented, in a panoramic vision, are the tonal unit, basic unit of oral speech; the informative progression and the RUT restriction; the grammatical categories and the verbal style; the role of subordination in clausal composition; and, to conclude, the nature and the function of textual connectors in the organization of oral discourse. On the whole, a contribution to the explanation of the mobile, diverse, polyvalent and complex nature of the oral language is attempted

Una caracterització cognitiva de les preguntes confirmatòries: (question tags)

This paper is an attempt to provide a cognitive approach to question tags, as grammatical constructions that show different syntactic forms. We propose an account based on the following points: (i) definition of question tags, (ii) contrastive analysis of the structures in several languages (Catalan, Spanish, French, Italian, English and German), (iii) pragmatic approach to question tags, (iv) syntactic approach, and (v) study of question tags as grammatical constructions. Our main claim is that the various forms that they show in the languages considered are closely related, and that they evidenciate some of the three definitory characteristics of the construction, namely, its mixed modality between assertion and interrogation, on the one hand, and halfway between affirmation and negation, on the other, its relationship with the truth value of the proposition it follows and finally its subjective character, which is connected with the manifestation of the opinions and discoursive attitudes of the speake