Chapter 2. Dutch pragmatic markers in the left periphery

2021 ◽  
pp. 49-74
Author(s):  
Ton van der Wouden ◽  
Ad Foolen
Keyword(s):  
Left Periphery ◽  
Pragmatic Markers

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.

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.

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.

Attitude Datives in Social Context – The Analytic Tools

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Youssef A. Haddad
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Cognitive Grammar ◽  
Stage Model ◽  
Sociocultural Context ◽  
Present Material ◽  
Situational Context ◽  
Pragmatic Markers ◽  
Activity Types ◽  
Contextualization Cues

This chapter defines attitude datives as evaluative and relational pragmatic markers that allow the speaker to present material from a specific perspective and to invite the hearer to view the material from the same perspective. It identifies three types of context that are pertinent to the analysis of these datives. These are the sociocultural context (e.g., values, beliefs), the situational context (i.e., identities, activity types), and the co-textual context (e.g., contextualization cues). The chapter draws on Cognitive Grammar and Theory of Stance and puts forth a sociocognitive model called the stancetaking stage model. In this model, when a speaker uses an attitude dative construction, she directs her hearer’s attention to the main content of her message and instructs him to view this content through the attitude dative as a filter. In this sense, the attitude dative functions as a perspectivizer and the main content becomes a perspectivized thought.

The relative cycle in Hungarian declaratives

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Bacskai-Atkari
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Relative Position ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Word Order Variation ◽  
Order Variation ◽  
Fixed Order ◽  
Embedded Clauses ◽  
Head Positions

This chapter examines word order variation and change in the high CP-domain of Hungarian embedded clauses containing the finite subordinating C head hogy ‘that’. It is argued that the complementizer hogy developed from an operator of the same morphophonological form, meaning ‘how’, and that its grammaticalization path develops in two steps. In addition to the change from an operator, located in a specifier, into a C head (specifier-to-head reanalysis), the fully grammaticalized complementizer hogy also changed its relative position on the CP-periphery, ultimately occupying the higher of two C head positions (upward reanalysis). Other complementizers that could co-occur with hogy in Old Hungarian eventually underwent similar reanalysis processes. Hence the possibility of accommodating two separate C heads in the left periphery was lost and variation in the relative position of complementizers was replaced by a fixed order.

Niuean

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane Massam
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Sentence Structure ◽  
Noun Incorporation ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Theta Role ◽  
Predicate Argument Structure

This book presents a detailed descriptive and theoretical examination of predicate-argument structure in Niuean, a Polynesian language within the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian family, spoken mainly on the Pacific island of Niue and in New Zealand. Niuean has VSO word order and an ergative case-marking system, both of which raise questions for a subject-predicate view of sentence structure. Working within a broadly Minimalist framework, this volume develops an analysis in which syntactic arguments are not merged locally to their thematic sources, but instead are merged high, above an inverted extended predicate which serves syntactically as the Niuean verb, later undergoing movement into the left periphery of the clause. The thematically lowest argument merges as an absolutive inner subject, with higher arguments merging as applicatives. The proposal relates Niuean word order and ergativity to its isolating morphology, by equating the absence of inflection with the absence of IP in Niuean, which impacts many aspects of its grammar. As well as developing a novel analysis of clause and argument structure, word order, ergative case, and theta role assignment, the volume argues for an expanded understanding of subjecthood. Throughout the volume, many other topics are also treated, such as noun incorporation, word formation, the parallel internal structure of predicates and arguments, null arguments, displacement typology, the role of determiners, and the structure of the left periphery.

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.

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