28.4050, Calls: Gen Ling, Pragmatics, Semantics, Syntax/Estonia

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LINGUIST List: Vol-28-4050. Tue Oct 03 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.4050, Calls: Gen Ling, Pragmatics, Semantics, Syntax/Estonia

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Date: Tue, 03 Oct 2017 10:20:34
From: Pierre-Yves Modicom [pymodicom.ling at yahoo.fr]
Subject: Discourse Particles and Information Structure

 
Full Title: Discourse Particles and Information Structure 

Date: 29-Aug-2018 - 01-Sep-2018
Location: Tallinn, Estonia 
Contact Person: Pierre-Yves Modicom
Meeting Email: pymodicom.ling at yahoo.fr

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Pragmatics; Semantics; Syntax 

Meeting Description:

Discourse particles and information structure
Thematic Session proposal – SLE Conference 2018, Tallinn.

The relevance of information structure (IS) for the syntax and semantics of
discourse particles has been demonstrated for many types of discourse
particles in many different languages. The aim of this workshop proposal is to
tackle this issue in the light of newer developments in the research on the
interplay between IS and the use of discourse particles in a number of
languages. 

We use the concept of “discourse particles” as a theory-neutral cover term for
all sorts of particles usually taking sentential scope and marking phenomena
such as stance, speech act specification, Common Ground management or
discourse structuration (see Fischer 2006).

Among discourse particles, Germanic “modal particles” have been very
extensively studied. In German, modal particles such as ja, doch or schon are
used to indicate whether the content of the utterance is part of the
conversational Common Ground and in what way the utterance matches
intersubjective expectations. It has been pointed out that their position in
the clause is chiefly determined by the theme-rheme structure of the VP, modal
particles being located between theme and rheme (Hentschel 1986, Abraham
1991). Furthermore, in recent years, there has also been some speculation on
possible links between modal particles and other IS parameters such focus,
especially Verum focus, and theticity (see Abraham 2017 for both, Müller 2014
for a general discussion about IS parameters in the syntax of German modal
particles and Vallduví & Vilkuna 1998 resp. Krifka 2006 for an overview of the
notions of information structure).

However, in a language like Japanese it is often assumed that the work done by
modal particles in German is effected by sentence-final particles (Endo 2007,
2012). Nevertheless, the issue of theticity plays a major role in the
licensing of non-final particles such as wa and ga, which are usually
interpreted in terms of topicality (discussion in Kuroda 2005). The comparison
between both languages could thus lead to a reassessment of the relationship
between theticity, IS and modal particles.

In a contrastive study on the anticipation of hearer reactions (a phenomenon
the author calls Abtönung, a term coined by Weydt 1969), Waltereit (2006)
discusses the functional equivalence between German modal particles and some
of the usual suspects in IS research, such as right dislocation in Italian and
prosodic topicalisation in French.

In Ancient Greek, several discourse particles seem to have focus-sensitive
usages as well: δή (« now, in truth, verily ») can be used both as a
sentential particle, for instance to mark an unexpected entailment, and in
association with a constituent under contrast; μήν (« verily, truly ») can be
used at the sentence level and have a contrastive value (see Thijs 2017). 

In Slavic, Bonnot & Bottineau (2012) have shown that the Russian conditional
(Irrealis) particle by is sensitive to the focus/background distinction.  On
the other hand, the Russian particle to, even though it seems to be
specialized for the marking of topicality, also exhibits modal values (Bonnot
1990, 2015).


Call for Papers:

We welcome all proposals addressing the relevance of IS categories (such as
theticity, focus, topicality or the theme-rheme distinction) for the analysis
of the syntax and semantics of discourse particles. 

Contributions may address single-language phenomena or favour a
cross-linguistic perspective. All theoretical frameworks are admissible.

Please submit your proposal before November 5 to: pymodicom.ling at yahoo.fr and
olivier-duplatre at wanadoo.fr.




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