On the rise of types of clause-final pragmatic markers in English

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Closs Traugott
Keyword(s):  
Left Periphery ◽  
Incremental Development ◽  
Pragmatic Markers ◽  
History Of

Much work on pragmatic markers in the history of English has been devoted to expressions used clause-initially at “left periphery”. By contrast, this study provides an account in broad outlines of the incremental development of pragmatic markers in clause-final “right periphery” position. Particular attention is paid to the rise of comment clauses, question tags, general extenders, and retrospective contrastive markers. Traditional characterizations of pragmatic markers, such as occurrence primarily at left periphery and with prosodic breaks are critiqued.

Clause Structure and Word Order in the History of German

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Clause Structure ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Research ◽  
The Right ◽  
Theoretical Analyses

Over roughly the last decade, there has been a notable rise in new research on historical German syntax in a generative perspective. This volume presents a state-of-the-art survey of this thriving new line of research by leading scholars in the field, combining it with new insights into the syntax of historical German. It is the first comprehensive and concise generative historical syntax of German covering numerous central aspects of clause structure and word order, tracing them throughout various historical stages. Each chapter combines a solid empirical basis and valid descriptive generalizations with reference also to the more traditional topological model of the German clause with a detailed discussion of theoretical analyses couched in the generative framework. The volume is divided into three parts according to the main parts of the clause: the left periphery dealing with verbal placement and the filling of the prefield (verb second, verb first, verb third orders) as well as adverbial connectives; the middle field including discussion of pronominal syntax, order of full NPs and the history of negation; and the right periphery with chapters on basic word order (OV/VO), prosodic and information-structural factors, and the verbal complex including the development of periphrastic verb forms and the phenomena of IPP (infinitivus pro participio) and ACI (accusativus cum infinitivo). This book thus provides a convenient overview of current research on the major issues concerning historical German clause structure both for scholars interested in more traditional description and for those interested in formal accounts of diachronic syntax.

scholarly journals Ouk ´Ismen Oudén: Negative Concord and Negative Polarity in the History of Greek

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Horrocks
Keyword(s):  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Negative Concord ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
Before And After ◽  
History Of ◽  
Negative Marker ◽  
Existential Quantification ◽  
Single Set

In Ancient Greek a single set of indefinite enclitic pronouns was used indifferently in both negative/affective environments (i.e. like negative polarity items (NPI)) and in positive ones (i.e. like positive polarity items (PPI)). At the same time the negative pronouns used as negative quantifiers (NQ) were also employed as emphatic NPIs, with negative concord. The two functions of each class (i.e. PPI-like vs NPI-like, NQ vs NPI) were determined by syntactic distribution. In the specific case of negative sentences, an indefinite before a sentential negative marker (NM) functioned like a PPI but after a NM like an NPI, while a negative pronoun before a NM was an NQ but after an NM an NPI. This pattern was at odds with the canonical VSO clause structure that evolved in later antiquity, in which focal constituents were contrastively stressed and fronted to the left periphery: neither indefinite nor negative pronouns could be focalised because of the prosodic and/or semantic restrictions on their distribution. This deficiency was eventually remedied by formal/prosodic recharacterisation, the loss of NQs and the generalisation of NPIs to all syntactic positions available to DPs, including the focus position, a process that triggered their reinterpretation as involving universal quantification over negation rather than, as before, existential quantification under negation. The Modern Greek PPI kápjos and NPI kanís are traced from their origins in Ancient Greek and their role in the evolution of the system is explored. The final outcome is typologically to be expected in so far as NQs are redundant in a system in which NPIs appear freely both before and after NMs.

Liberal Judaism and Local Jewish Identity: The Dublin Jewish Progressive Congregation (DJPC), 1946–1967

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Natalie Wynn
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Local Memory ◽  
Incremental Development ◽  
Jewish Historiography ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Time ◽  
Institutional Relationships

Abstract As a minority within a minority, the Dublin Jewish Progressive Congregation (DJPC) barely features in the history of either Irish Jewry or Britain’s Liberal Judaism (LJ) movement. Any discussions of the congregation have been superficial; it is dismissed as religiously lax in the orthodox-led, largely anecdotal Irish Jewish historiography, but as conservative in the LJ context. This article critically examines the DJPC in its own right and “from within” for the first time, drawing on local memory and a range of material, personal and archival. I begin by querying exactly what the synagogue’s founders were seeking to achieve in establishing an Irish outpost of Jewish reform. The incremental development of a distinctive Irish brand of progressive Judaism is then investigated through the formative influence of the DJPC’s primary institutional relationships: that with the local orthodox community, and that with the Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues (ULPS) in London.

Intersubjectification and clause periphery

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Closs Traugott
Keyword(s):  
Left Periphery ◽  
Discourse Coherence ◽  
Turn Taking ◽  
History Of ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
Using Data

Ways of identifying subjectification and especially intersubjectification are discussed using data from the history of English no doubt and surely. These adverbs arose out of non-modal expressions and were recruited for use as epistemic adverbs and metadiscursive markers. The data are shown not to support the hypothesis that expressions at left periphery are likely to be subjective (oriented toward turn-taking and discourse coherence), those at right periphery intersubjective (oriented toward turn-giving or elicitation of response, and toward the Addressee’s stance and participation in the communicative situation.). While no doubt is subjective at both left and right periphery, surely is intersubjective at both peripheries

Patterns of (inter)subjectivity

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 166-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolin Hofmockel
Keyword(s):  
Left Periphery ◽  
Methodological Framework ◽  
Linguistic Context ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Pragmatic Markers ◽  
Discourse Patterns ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
Per Se ◽  
The Right ◽  
Subjective Meanings

Abstract The prevalent hypothesis in research on pragmatic markers suggests that the left periphery of an utterance attracts predominantly subjective meanings, whereas the right periphery is the locus of intersubjective meanings. The goal of this paper is to test this hypothesis for but as used in a dataset of spoken Glaswegian English, a variety in which but may occur in both left- and right-peripheral positions. Considering that but derives its discursive meaning not per se, but from its embeddedness in particularized contexts, the methodological framework integrates the notion of (inter)subjectivity with the interactional-sociolinguistic concept of contextualization cue to identify (inter)subjective patterned co-occurrences for but. A fine-grained analysis of the patterns but forms with subjective and intersubjective cues in its local linguistic context shows that discourse patterns of left-peripheral but tend to foreground subjective meanings, while discourse patterns of right-peripheral but tend to foreground more intersubjective meanings, supporting the hypothesis of peripheral asymmetry.

Discourse and Pragmatic Markers in the Romance Languages

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva-Maria Remberger
Keyword(s):  
Romance Languages ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Prepositional Phrases ◽  
Modal Particles ◽  
Pragmatic Markers ◽  
Successful Communication ◽  
The Common ◽  
Functional Units ◽  
Linguistic Interfaces ◽  
Speech Situation

Discourse and pragmatic markers are functional units, universally present in human language, that deictically relate text fragments, propositions, utterances, and discourse chunks to the context of speech. They manage the interaction of the discourse participants in the speech situation and facilitate successful communication. This group of functional units includes elements as diverse as discourse and pragmatic markers in the broad sense, illocutionary markers, sentence particles, modal particles, and connectives. Romance languages, particularly the spoken varieties, exhibit all those types of elements, even modal particles, which have often been claimed to be absent in Romance. As in other languages, discourse and pragmatic markers mostly develop out of adverbs and adverbials (especially prepositional phrases), but nouns, adjectives, verbal forms, and other (parenthetical) phrases are further possible sources. One case that is peculiar to Romance is the ability to combine lexical material with the common complementizer corresponding to ‘that,’ which leads to more or less grammaticalized items that function as discourse and pragmatic markers. The wealth of data for Romance and Latin offers plenty of opportunities for the study of the diachronic evolution of discourse and pragmatic markers. In this context, the question whether discourse and pragmatic markers represent cases of grammaticalization or pragmaticalization and discoursivization remains a matter of some debate. In particular, the increased interest in linguistic interfaces in formal linguistic grammar theory has led to highly detailed investigations of the Romance left periphery, which has been shown to host all kinds of discourse-related phenomena.

Old Gallo-Romance, periodization, and the left periphery

2020 ◽  
pp. 9-40
Author(s):  
Sam Wolfe
Keyword(s):  
Left Periphery ◽  
Null Subject ◽  
Empirical Basis ◽  
History Of ◽  
Verb Placement ◽  
Inversion Effects

This chapter seeks to reappraise the value of periodization for both early French and Occitan, by analysing a range of syntactic changes including verb placement, inversion effects, the structure of the left periphery, the null subject system and the particle SI. On this basis, it is argued that in syntactic terms there is some value in assigning the label ‘middle’ to a particular period in the history of French, whereas there is minimal empirical basis to assign the same label to a particular stage in the history of Occitan. Overall in terms of comparative Romance syntactic typology this is linked to the fact that medieval and modern Occitan are syntactically closer to the ‘southern’ Romance prototype than French.

Organization and Information Processing: Elements of a History of Early Digitization in the Swiss Federal Administration

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (9) ◽  
pp. 1305-1318
Author(s):  
Guido Koller
Keyword(s):  
Data Processing ◽  
Information Management ◽  
Important Change ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Processing Elements ◽  
Incremental Development ◽  
History Of ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Federal Administration

Since the founding of the Swiss federal state in 1848, government and administration have been constantly reorganized. One important change occurred between the 1960s and 1980s: the automation and standardization of information management. Through two cases, the Zentrales Ausländerregister (ZAR) and the Zentralstelle der Bundesverwaltung für Organisationsfragen (ZOB), this article examines the organization and mechanization of information in Swiss Federal Administration by focusing on data processing as the predominant measure for the operationalization of administrative workflows. The period between the 1960s and 1970s proved decisive in the incremental development of data processing that ultimately led to the digitization of ever larger parts of administration.

scholarly journals Die Komparativ- und Superlativformen besser/am besten/das Beste als Varianten in modalen Vergleichskonstruktionen

2021 ◽  
Vol 111 (6) ◽  
pp. 137-165
Author(s):  
Doris Höhmann
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Systematic Investigation ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Parallel Corpora ◽  
High Performing ◽  
Corpus Linguistic ◽  
Pragmatic Markers ◽  
Comparative Constructions ◽  
Research Goal

It is well known that linguistic variants play a key role in the acquisition of language skills in the first, second or foreign language as well as in writing and translation processes and in general in communicative interactions. Thus, a major research goal is the systematic investigation of intra- and interlinguistic variation. Due to its complexity, its qualitative-quantitative analysis continues to be a challenging issue, but it seems to become more and more feasible thanks to both the possibility of compiling very large corpora and the availability of high-performing corpus-linguistic tools. The paper discusses a corpus-linguistic pilot study concerning the use of besser, am besten and das Beste as pragmatic markers in a cross-linguistic perspective. In particular, the analysis focusses on selected superlative and comparative constructions on the left periphery used for expressing advice. The data basis consists mainly of German and Italian comparable very large web corpora and, to a lesser extent, of bilingual sentence pairs drawn from parallel corpora. As will be shown, even restricting the analysis to a very small segment of microvariation, in both languages the modal constructions appear to be characterized by the combination of numerous overlapping and interplaying variants and by different tendencies in language use.

Liberal Judaism and Local Jewish Identity: The Dublin Jewish Progressive Congregation (DJPC), 1946–1967

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-152
Author(s):  
Natalie Wynn
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Local Memory ◽  
Incremental Development ◽  
Jewish Historiography ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Time ◽  
Institutional Relationships

Abstract As a minority within a minority, the Dublin Jewish Progressive Congregation (DJPC) barely features in the history of either Irish Jewry or Britain’s Liberal Judaism (LJ) movement. Any discussions of the congregation have been superficial; it is dismissed as religiously lax in the orthodox-led, largely anecdotal Irish Jewish historiography, but as conservative in the LJ context. This article critically examines the DJPC in its own right and “from within” for the first time, drawing on local memory and a range of material, personal and archival. I begin by querying exactly what the synagogue’s founders were seeking to achieve in establishing an Irish outpost of Jewish reform. The incremental development of a distinctive Irish brand of progressive Judaism is then investigated through the formative influence of the DJPC’s primary institutional relationships: that with the local orthodox community, and that with the Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues (ULPS) in London.

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