This website will host all relevant materials for our course: “The syntax of interaction”<\/p>\n
Instructor: Martina Wiltschko<\/a><\/p>\n Further information on the research projected reported here can be found here<\/a><\/p>\n Course Description<\/strong><\/p>\n When we talk to other people, we not only say things, we also do things. Hence, it doesn\u2019t come as a surprise that languages have means to encode this interactional dimension of meaning. To see this consider the following interaction:<\/p>\n A:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That was a gorgeous sunset, eh? \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0B:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah, I know, right?<\/p>\n A asserts A\u2019s assessment of the beauty of the sunset. That\u2019s what A says<\/em>. At the same time, A (by using the sentence final particle eh) <\/em>conveys that she assumes that B agrees and asks for confirmation that this is indeed the case. Hence I call discourse markers like eh<\/em> confirmationals. That\u2019s what A does<\/em>.<\/p>\n In B\u2019s response, B indicates agreement with A\u2019s 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<\/em>. By using sentence-final right <\/em>B validates A\u2019s evaluation of the sunset.<\/p>\n 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<\/em>), but less so the interactive content expressed in then dialogue above by sentence peripheral particles (eh, yeah, right)<\/em>. 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.<\/p>\n 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<\/em>. 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019 1970, and which has recently been revived in various ways often referred to as the syntacticization of speech acts<\/em>. What is, however, missing from this body of work is the attention to the interactional dimension of speech acts.<\/p>\n 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 <\/em>and responding. <\/em><\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n