The syntax of interaction | Course in Vitoria-Gasteiz, May 2017

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Course Description

When we talk to other people, we not only say things, we also do things. Hence, it doesn’t come as a surprise that languages have means to encode this interactional dimension of meaning. To see this consider the following interaction:

A: That was a gorgeous sunset, eh? B: Yeah, I know, right?

A asserts A’s assessment of the beauty of the sunset. That’s what A says. At the same time, A (by using the sentence final particle eh) conveys that she assumes that B agrees and asks for confirmation that this is indeed the case. Hence I call discourse markers like eh confirmationals. That’s what A does.

In B’s response, B indicates agreement with A’s assessment. What B says is that he knows; an what B does is convey full agreement with A without making A feel that what s/he said was redundant. That is, agreement is indicated by the use of the response marker yeah. By using sentence-final right B validates A’s evaluation of the sunset.

Within the generative tradition, much of current syntactic theory is based on modelling what is said, i.e., the descriptive content of an utterance (That was a gorgeous sunset. I know), but less so the interactive content expressed in then dialogue above by sentence peripheral particles (eh, yeah, right). There are (at least) three main reasons for the scarcity of syntactic treatments of interactive content. First, the presence of these particles is not necessary for the grammaticality of the sentence as a whole. If syntax is viewed as the module of language responsible for generating well-formed sentences, then the use of these sentence-peripheral particles is arguably outside the scope of syntax.

This conclusion is further supported by the fact that these markers of interaction (sometimes referred to as discourse markers, or pragmatic markers) are situated in sentence-peripheral positions. Sometimes they are even set apart by their prosodic properties (they may be separated by a pause and they can bear their own intonational contour). It is for this reason that they are often classified as extra-clausal constituents. Now, if the unit of analysis of syntax is the sentence, then it follows that sentence-peripheral markers are not to be analyzed within the domain of syntax.

Finally, a third reason for not exploring these markers of interaction from a generative syntactic point of view has to do with the division between competence and performance. Specifically, since its inception, linguists working within the generative tradition have tried to understand what people know when they know a language, i.e., their competence. The kind of language-based interactions we have when we have conversations have typically been viewed as performance and hence has not been considered the object of study for generative syntacticians. This does not mean however that the interactional dimension of language has not been studied. In fact there is a large body of research on conversations as well as on the kinds of markers that encode interactive content, like confirmationals and response markers. One of the goals of this course is to bring together these different avenues of research.

Specifically, I explore the idea that the domain of syntax is not restricted to modelling the descriptive content of a sentence. Instead, I show that it is also beneficial to explore its interactive content from a syntactic point of view. This is an idea that goes back to at least Ross’ 1970, and which has recently been revived in various ways often referred to as the syntacticization of speech acts. What is, however, missing from this body of work is the attention to the interactional dimension of speech acts.

The core idea I introduce in this course is that the syntactic representation of the clausal architecture includes a level of representation dedicated to the interactional dimension of language. Specifically, I propose that there are two core functions of language which facilitate interaction and which are introduced in two dedicated layers above the traditional clause: grounding and responding.

We will discuss several case-studies of linguistic expressions that serve these functions. In particular we will explore confirmationals, respsonse markers, and a few other discourse markers from a cross-linguistic perspective. The empirical base for our case studies draws on data from Atayal (Formosan), Chinese (both Mandarin and Cantonese), English, German, Japanese, Ktunaxa (language isolate), Medumba (Bantu), and Spanish.

The cross-linguistic investigation of discourse markers will allow us to draw conclusions about the precise nature of the linguistic encoding of the interactional dimension: are there any universals and what are the parameters of variation? This will allow us to develop a formal typology for interactional categories. This typology is intended to serve as a tool for the discovery and comparison of discourse markers across languages.

	Topic	Reading
Day 1 Introduction	From Speech acts to Interaction	Beyssade & Marandin 2006 Clark & Brennan 1991 Fraser 1999
Day 1 Introduction	The syntacticization of speech acts	Ross 1970 Speas & Tenny 2003
Day 2 Introducing an idea	The syntacticization of interaction	Wiltschko 2016 Haegeman & Hill 2013
	Framework: The extended Universal spine	Wiltschko 2014 (chapters 1-3)
	Methodology: storyboards	Burton & Matthewson 2015
Day 3 Case study I	Confirmationals	Davis 2011 (chapters 1 and 6) Wiltschko & Heim 2016 Yang & Wiltschko 2016
Day 4 Case study II	Response markers	Holmberg 2016 Krifka 2013 Wiltschko 2016 Farkas & Bruce 2010
Day 5 Conclusions	Other discourse markers	Zimmermann 2011 Thoma 2016 (chapters 5-6)
Day 5 Conclusions	Towards a typology of discourse markers	Heim et al. 2016 Wiltschko et al. in prep.

Selected references:

Beyssade C. & J.-M. Marandin 2006. The Speech Act Assignment Problem Revisited: Disentangling Speaker’s Commitment from Speaker’s Call on Addressee, In O. Bonami & P. Cabredo-Hoffher (eds.), Empirical Studies in Syntax and Semantics 6, 37-68.

Burton, Strang and Lisa Matthewson 2015. Targeted Construction Storyboards in Semantic Fieldwork. In R. Bochnak and L. Matthewson (eds.), Methodologies in Semantic Fieldwork. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 135-156.

Clark, Herbert H., and Susan E. Brennan. Grounding in communication. Perspectives on socially shared cognition 13.1991 (1991): 127-149.

Davis, Ch. 2011. Constraining Interpretation: Sentence Final Particles in Japanese. PhD dissertation, UMass Open Access Dissertations. Paper 397

Farkas, D. F., and K. B. Bruce. On Reacting to Assertions and Polar Questions. Journal of Semantics, 2010, 81-118.

Fraser, Bruce (1999) What are discourse markers? Journal of Pragmatics 31: 931-952.

Haegeman, Liliane, and Virginia Hill. 2013. The syntactization of discourse. Syntax and its limits. 370-390.

Heim, J; H. Keupdjio; Z Lam; A. Osa Gomez & M. Wiltschko, in press: Intonation and Particles as Speech Act Modifiers: A Syntactic Analysis. Studies in Chinese Linguistics.

Holmberg, A. 2016 The syntax of yes and no. Oxford University Press

Krifka, Manfred. Response Particles as Propositional Anaphors. Proceedings of SALT 23, 2013, 1-18.

Paul, Waltraud. 2014. Why particles are not particular: Sentencefinal particles in Chinese as heads of a split CP. Studia Linguistica 68.1 (2014): 77-115

Ross, J.R. 1970. On declarative sentences. In R. A. Jacobs & P. S. Rosenbaum (eds.), Readings in English Transformational Grammar. Waltham, MA: Ginn.

Speas, M., & Tenny, C. (2003). Conﬁgurational properties of point of view roles. Asymmetry in grammar, 1, 315-345.

Thoma, S. C. 2017. Discourse particles and the syntax of discourse-evidence from Miesbach Bavarian (Doctoral dissertation, University of British Columbia).

Wiltschko, M. 2014. The universal structure of categories. Towards a formal typology. Cambridge University Press.

Wiltschko, M. in press. Response particles beyond answering. to appear in Bailey, L. and M. Sheehan (eds.) Order and Structure in Syntax. Language Science Press

Wiltschko, M. & J. Heim. 2016. The syntax of confirmationals. A neo-performative analysis. In: Gunther Kaltenböck, Evelien Keizer and Arne Lohmann (eds.) Outside the Clause. Form and function of extra-clausal constituent. John Benjamins. 303-340.

Yang, X., & Wiltschko, M. (2016). The confirmational marker ha in Northern Mandarin. Journal of Pragmatics, 104, 67-82.

Zimmermann, Malte. 2011. Discourse particles. In Paul Portner, Claudia Maienborn & Klaus von Heusinger (eds.): Handbook of Semantics./Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2012-2038.