Reduced Parenthetical Clauses as Mitigators

Reduced Parenthetical Clauses as Mitigators PDF

Author: Stefan Schneider

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2007-01-01

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 9789027223012

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While parentheticals attract constant attention, they very rarely constitute the main subject of monographs. This book provides a comprehensive account of reduced parenthetical clauses (RPCs) in three Romance languages. Typical French RPCs are je crois, disons, je dirais, je pense, je sais pas, and je trouve. The research draws on 22 corpora of spoken French, Italian, and Spanish comprising a total amount of 3,975,500 words. Its results consist in a typology of the relevant expressions in the three languages, in the understanding of their pragmatic function and of the factors influencing their use, and in the description of their syntactic and prosodic properties. Other findings are that RPCs are not restricted to statements but also occur in questions and that belief verbs are not as frequent as commonly assumed. Although the book is about Romance parentheticals, its conclusions are relevant for other languages.

Linguistic Mitigation in English and Spanish

Linguistic Mitigation in English and Spanish PDF

Author: Nydia Flores

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-02-05

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 0429000111

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This volume offers a comprehensive examination of mitigation in speech in English and Spanish, exploring how it is defined and theorized and the various linguistic features employed to soften or downgrade the impact of a particular message across a range of settings. Building on the body of work done on mitigation in English, the book begins by discussing how it has been conceptualized in the literature, drawing on politeness theory among other perspectives from pragmatics, and highlighting increasing research on these topics in native and bilingual Spanish speakers and learners of Spanish. The volume explores examples from a variety of discursive contexts, including institutions, courts, and classrooms, to unpack mitigation as it occurs in spontaneous speech through different lenses, looking both at the actual units of discourse but also taking a broader view by examining differences across dialects as well. The book also looks at the ways in which conclusions drawn from this research might be applied pedagogically in language learning classrooms. This volume will serve as a jumping-off point for broader discussion in the field of mitigation and will be of particular interest to graduate students and researchers in pragmatics, sociolinguistics, and discourse analysis, in addition to learners and pre-service teachers of Spanish.

Parenthetical Verbs

Parenthetical Verbs PDF

Author: Stefan Schneider

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2015-03-30

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 3110376148

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Parenthesis has recently seen a considerable surge in interest. This volume presents the – often contrasting – theoretical positions on parenthetical verbs and examines them from different analytical perspectives. It covers parenthetical verbs in English as well as in several other languages. Methodologically, the volume is marked by its empirical orientation: Most contributions are based on data from experiments or corpora.

Parenthesis and Ellipsis

Parenthesis and Ellipsis PDF

Author: Marlies Kluck

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2014-12-12

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 1614514836

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This volume presents a cross-section of research addressing the interaction of two prominent areas in linguistic theory: parenthesis and ellipsis. The contributions address various theoretical questions raised by 'incomplete' parenthetical constituents, covering a diverse empirical domain and various subfields of linguistics.

Parentheticals in Spoken English

Parentheticals in Spoken English PDF

Author: Nicole Dehé

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-06-05

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 0521761921

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This book investigates the prosodic phrasing of parentheticals in spoken English and implications for a theory of the syntax-prosody interface.

Forms and Functions of Meta-Discourse

Forms and Functions of Meta-Discourse PDF

Author: Maria Cristina Lo Baido

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2024-07-01

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 3110799855

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This book constitutes the first systematic analysis of meta-discourse in the spoken domain, addressing the question of how, why, and when speakers switch from discourse to meta-discourse by means of comment clauses (e.g., ‘I think’). The case of Present-day Italian is considered, exploring the internal properties of comment clauses (e.g., morphosyntax and semantics of the verb), their relations with the surrounding discourse (e.g., position of comment clause), and their prosodic profiles. This study shows that speakers recur to meta-discourse to convey a non-random set of functions, having mainly to do with the online process of reference construction (e.g., approximation and reformulation) and with the degree of speaker’s commitment (e.g., epistemicity and emphasis). Comment clauses are also used as attention-getting or topic-resuming devices, though less frequently. One of the most interesting results of this study is the identification of a close relation between meta-discourse and stance-taking in spoken domain, with speakers recurring to comment clauses to convey their attitude. Finally, meta-discourse turns out to be highly influenced, if not constrained, by universal properties of the spoken domain (i.e., non-linearity).

Outside the Clause

Outside the Clause PDF

Author: Gunther Kaltenböck

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2016-10-03

Total Pages: 450

ISBN-13: 9027266557

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This volume brings together a number of articles on the form and function of extra-clausal constituents, a group of linguistic elements which have puzzled linguists by defying analysis in terms of ordinary sentence grammar. Given their high frequency and communicative importance, these elements can, however, no longer be dismissed as a marginal linguistic phenomenon. In recent years this awareness has resulted not only in more systematic treatments of extra-clausal constituents, but has also highlighted the need to account for them in grammatical theory. Based on (mainly English) corpus data, the volume investigates the discourse-pragmatic, semantic, syntactic and phonological features of a range of extra-clausal constituents, including discourse markers, free adjuncts, left dislocands, insubordinate clauses and various kinds of adverbials. The individual chapters adopt a number of different perspectives, investigating the diachronic development of extra-clausal constituents, their multi-functionality and their use in bilingual settings, also addressing the question of how they can be incorporated into existing models of grammar.

Parentheticals

Parentheticals PDF

Author: Nicole Dehé

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 9789027233707

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This volume offers a unique collection of articles investigating the often neglected phenomenon of parentheticals, which are commonly seen as expressions interrupting the linear structure of a host utterance, but lacking a structural relation to it. The book provides an up-to-date introduction to the subject, as well as a range of research articles addressing questions including the syntactic link between parenthetical and frame utterance, the relation between syntactic and prosodic form, the usage and interpretation of parentheticals, and many more. It embraces research findings from different European languages (English, German, Dutch, Romance) and covers an array of forms of syntactic interpolations (from one-word parentheticals to clausal) and a range of methodologies, including empirical research, corpus research, and theoretical analyses. The collection underlines the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to a multi-faceted phenomenon such as parentheticals.

The Rise of Discourse Markers

The Rise of Discourse Markers PDF

Author: Bernd Heine

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-06-24

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1108833853

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This pioneering study highlights the importance in linguistic communication of discourse markers, a previously neglected area of research.

The Grammar of Interactives

The Grammar of Interactives PDF

Author: Bernd Heine

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-01-31

Total Pages: 481

ISBN-13: 0192699326

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This book explores a domain of discourse processing referred to as 'interactive grammar', based on an analysis of grammatical descriptions of over 100 languages spoken across the world. While much previous work has treated interactive grammar as a fairly marginal part of language, Bernd Heine describes it here as a distinct category that contrasts with sentence grammar both in its functions and its structural behavior. He identifies ten types of interactives - i.e. extra-clausal expressions of linguistic discourse: attention signals, directives, discourse markers, evaluatives, ideophones, interjections, response elicitors, response signals, social formulae, and vocatives. The analysis reveals that speakers make use of two contrasting modes for structuring their discourses, both of which are needed for successful communication: one is sentence grammar, which has a propositional format and analytic organization; the other is interactive grammar, which has a holophrastic organization and a focus on social communication. While the argument structure of sentence grammar is shaped by the propositional format of sentences, that of interactive grammar is shaped by the indexical nature of the situation of discourse. This distinction shows interesting correlations both with findings from neurolinguistic studies on differential activity in the two hemispheres of the human brain, and with observations from social psychology on the differences between systems of reasoning and judgment.

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