scholarly journals Towards a model of the syntax–discourse interface: a syntactic analysis of please

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
REBECCA WOODS
Keyword(s):  
Speech Act ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Illocutionary Force ◽  
Syntactic Analysis ◽  
Final Position ◽  
Functional Elements ◽  
Discourse Marker ◽  
Number Of Factors ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Discourse Interface

This article examines the syntax and semantics of please. Using a mainstream generative syntactic framework, I propose that syntactically integrated please is a discourse marker that marks the clause in which it occurs as a request. Please may appear clause-initially or clause-medially as determined by a number of factors, including clause type, modality, negation and the application of ellipsis. There is also a homophonous marker please that occurs in clause-final position; clause-final please does not mark requests per se but ‘bonds’ a speaker and addressee, reinforcing their relationship as requester and requestee. This analysis of please provides support for syntactic approaches to speech act structure, particularly the claim that illocutionary force is part of narrow syntax rather than a solely pragmatic phenomenon. The article provides support for pursuing a model of the syntax–discourse interface in which interactions between discourse markers and clause-internal functional elements, such as mood and modality, form the interface between syntax and discourse.

On the syntax-discourse interface of nonsententials in Mandarin

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 252-305
Author(s):  
Wei-Cherng Sam Jheng
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Illocutionary Force ◽  
Clausal Structure ◽  
Major Consequence ◽  
West Flemish ◽  
Theory Of Discourse ◽  
Discourse Particle ◽  
Discourse Interface ◽  
Type Information

Abstract This paper aims to develop the empirical and theoretical basis for the necessity of motivating a cartographic approach (Rizzi 1997; Cinque 1999) to the clausal structure of nonsententials (NSs) in Mandarin. Especially noteworthy about NSs is that they are able to encode clause type information, illocutionary force and the discourse roles speaker and hearer/addressee, though their structure is considerably reduced. Following the line of reasoning in Sigurðsson & Maling (2012) and Tsai (2015a, 2015b), I show that NSs have a fully-fledged CP structure, according to the effects exerted upon their interpretation. Adopting Haegeman’s (2014) sa*P analysis of the discourse particle in West Flemish, I argue that NSs contain a suprasentential structure, a Speech Act layer, dominating ForceP and responsible for the encoding of the speaker- hearer/addressee relation sensitive to the immediate context. Crucially, it is argued that the discourse properties surrounding NSs pertain to the articulated CP structure of NSs. The major consequence of the proposed analysis is to show that the theory of discourse is closely tied to the architecture of grammar in general, adding weight to the view that the transparent syntax-discourse mapping results from a set of functional projections layered in the CP periphery.

An Optative-Comparative Construction Expressing Emphatic Assertion in Classical Spanish

2020 ◽  
Vol 132 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-306
Author(s):  
Lorena Núñez Pinero
Keyword(s):  
Speech Act ◽  
Illocutionary Force ◽  
Pragmatic Analysis ◽  
Comparative Construction

This paper offers a pragmatic analysis of a rarely used construction in Classical Spanish: an emphatic comparison of equality with optative illocution A comparative sentence such as Así me ayude Dios como fue buena mi intención (’May God help me just as my intention was good‘) is used for emphasizing the assertion fue buena mi intención (’my intention was good‘) This construction is probably a Latinism It occurs in Latin, especially in Plautus and Terence, and is mostly attested in Spanish in humanistic comedy and in the Celestinesque tradition of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries The first member of the construction is interpreted at the pragmatic level as a reinforcer of the illocutionary force of the comparative construction as a whole, which expresses an indirect assertive speech act Speakers perform this type of act by satisfying its sincerity condition: they believe that the event of the second member is true, because if it were not, they would run a risk, i.e. the optative would entail a curse for themselves By contrast, when the event is true, the optative entails a good wish for themselves This paper also analyzes how the pragmatic properties of the construction are reflected in its semantic and morphosyntactic properties

Speech Acts in Discourse Context

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craige Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Language Game ◽  
Illocutionary Force ◽  
Semantic Type ◽  
Discourse Context ◽  
Semantics And Pragmatics ◽  
Consensus View ◽  
Grammatical Mood ◽  
The Relationship

This essay sketches an approach to speech acts in which mood does not semantically determine illocutionary force. The conventional content of mood determines the semantic type of the clause in which it occurs, and, given the nature of discourse, that type most naturally lends itself to a particular type of speech act, i.e. one of the three basic types of language game moves—making an assertion (declarative), posing a question (interrogative), or proposing to one’s addressee(s) the adoption of a goal (imperative). There is relative consensus about the semantics of two of these, the declarative and interrogative; and this consensus view is entirely compatible with the present proposal about the relationship between the semantics and pragmatics of grammatical mood. Hence, the proposal is illustrated with the more controversial imperative.

Force and Conversational States

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah E. Murray ◽  
William B. Starr
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Language Game ◽  
Illocutionary Force ◽  
Semantic Type ◽  
Grammatical Mood

This essay sketches an approach to speech acts in which mood does not semantically determine illocutionary force. The conventional content of mood determines the semantic type of the clause in which it occurs, and, given the nature of discourse, that type most naturally lends itself to serving as a particular type of speech act, that is, to serving as one of the three basic types of language game moves-making an assertion (declarative); posing a question (interrogative); or proposing to one’s addressee(s) the adoption of a goal (imperative). This type of semantics for grammatical mood is illustrated with the imperative.

Outlining a grammaticalization path for the Spanish formula en plan (de): A contribution to crosslinguistic pragmatics

Linguistics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 58 (6) ◽  
pp. 1543-1579
Author(s):  
Paula Rodríguez-Abruñeiras
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Contrastive Analysis ◽  
Discourse Marker ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Diachronic Study ◽  
Diachronic Development ◽  
The Early 21St Century

AbstractThis article discusses the diachronic development of the Spanish multifunctional formula en plan (with its variant en plan de, literally ‘in plan (of)’ but usually equivalent to English like). The article has two main aims: firstly, to describe the changes that the formula has undergone since its earliest occurrences as a marker in the nineteenth century up to the early 21st century. The diachronic study evinces a process of grammaticalization in three steps: from noun to clause adverbial and then to discourse marker. Secondly, to conduct a contrastive analysis between en plan (de) and the English markers like and kind of/kinda so as to shed new light on the potential existence of a universal pathway of grammaticalization in the emergence of discourse markers.

scholarly journals The Speech Act Fallacy Fallacy

1982 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 509-526 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Hurka
Keyword(s):  
Speech Act ◽  
Illocutionary Force ◽  
The Other ◽  
John Searle ◽  
Speech Act Analysis

John Searle has charged R.M. Hare's prescriptivist analysis of the meaning of ‘good,’ ‘ought’ and the other evaluative words with committing what he calls the ‘speech act fallacy.’ This is a fallacy which Searle thinks is committed not only by Hare's analysis, but by any analysis which attributes to a word the function of indicating that a particular speech act is being performed, or that an utterance has a particular illocutionary force. ‘There is a condition of adequacy which any analysis of the meaning of a word must meet,’ Searle writes, ‘and which the speech act analysis fails to meet. Any analysis of the meaning of a word must be consistent with the fact that the same word (or morpheme) can mean the same thing in all the different kinds of sentences in which it can occur.' Hare maintains that the word ‘good’ is used to indicate the speech act of prescribing. He maintains that one of the principal functions of this word is to indicate that utterances of sentences containing it have prescriptive illocutionary force, and that an analysis of its meaning must make explicit and ineliminable reference to this force-indicating function. But ‘good’ regularly occurs in sentences utterances of which appear to have no prescriptive illocutionary force.

scholarly journals Grammatical Positions of Focuser Like Among Native English-Speaking Undergraduate Students

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 116
Author(s):  
Basim Alamri
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Final Exam ◽  
Discourse Marker ◽  
Midwestern University ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Native English Speaking

Discourse markers (DMs) are used in everyday conversations to serve different meanings and functions. The present exploratory study investigated grammatical positions of focuser like among 60 undergraduate native-English-speaking students at a midwestern university in the United States. Students were asked to read and place focuser like in this sentence: “We have to read five chapters for the final exam”. Then students were required to indicate a degree of acceptability of the placement of like at every possible position in sentences that contained the discourse marker like in 10 different grammatical positions. The results showed that students preferred inserting the DM like before a noun phrase, at the beginning of a sentence, and before a verb phrase, respectively. In terms of gender, females frequently posited focuser like before a sentence, whereas males placed it before a noun phrase. Also, the discourse marker like does not occur within auxiliary. Finally, this study draws conclusions about different grammatical positions and broader usages of discourse marker focuser like among younger students. 

scholarly journals Le marche di lista in russo. Segnali riformulativi, estensivi, generalizzanti… i vse takoe

2016 ◽  
pp. 17-43
Author(s):  
Valentina Benigni
Keyword(s):  
Functional Properties ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Discourse Marker ◽  
Structural And Functional Properties

This paper offers a survey of list markers in contemporary Russian, i.e. discourse markers that signal the presence of a list and fulfil specific semantic and pragmatic functions, such as generalization (и все такое ‘and things like that’), exemplification (типа ‘such as/kind of’) or reformulation of the list content (так сказать ‘so to speak’). It also explores the structural and functional properties of general extenders within the framework of CxG, focusing particularly on the process of lexicalization and grammaticalization of the discourse marker и все такое ‘and things like that’.

scholarly journals Discourse Marker Sequencing and Grammaticalization

2013 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Koops ◽  
Arne Lohmann
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Final Outcome ◽  
Discourse Marker ◽  
Grammatical Functions

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt:This paper deals with the grammatical properties of discourse markers (DMs), specifically their ordering preferences relative to one another. While the data presented here are synchronic, we approach the topic of DM sequencing from the perspective of grammaticalization. From this perspective, DMs can be understood as the result of a process in which elements serving other functions, for example grammatical functions at the level of sentential syntax, come to be conventionally used as markers of discourse-level relations, or what Schiffrin (1987: 31) operationally defined as “sequentially dependent elements which bracket units of talk.” Here we are concerned with the final outcome of this process. We ask: to what degree do fully formed DMs retain or lose the grammatical properties associated with their previous role, specifically their syntactic co-occurrence constraints? In other words, what degree of syntactic decategorialization (in the sense of Hopper 1991) do DMs display?

scholarly journals A SYNTACTIC ANALYSIS OF THE ENGLISH DISCOURSE MARKER ONLY AND ITS VIETNAMESE TRANSLATIONAL EQUIVALENTS

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tran Quoc Thao ◽  
Nguyen Van Muoi
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Syntactic Analysis ◽  
Contrastive Analysis ◽  
Discourse Marker ◽  
Syntactic Features

This descriptive and qualitative study, part of a big project, endeavored to explore the syntactic features of the English discourse marker only and its Vietnamese translational equivalents. It involved the development of a bilingual corpus, which consisted of 168 English and 168 Vietnamese instances of sentences containing only. The interpretive contrastive analysis was employed. The findings reveal that only in English often comes in three positions, namely, initial, medial, final, whereas their Vietnamese equivalent usually appears in initial and medial positions. Additionally, there are more similarities than differences in terms of syntactic functions of only used in English and Vietnamese.

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