Towards an intonational-illocutionary interface
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Tista Bagchi
Abstract
Sentence – or rather, utterance – intonation poses an interesting conceptual challenge for any linguistic theory that assumes a rigid separation of phonological and pragmatic representations (as assumed in current Minimalist theory), as does the interaction of structure with speech act (examined in detail by Sadock 1974). This paper seeks to demonstrate that intonation and illocutionary force all too often correlate with one another, with or without the mediation of syntactic form, and argues that this correlation warrants the hypothesis of an interface between intonation and illocutionary force, with both matches and mismatches, in continuation of the automodular view of language advocated by Sadock (1991 et seq.). Citing evidence from child language, dialectal variation, and autism research in Bangla and Hindi, besides research on Norwegian intonation and pragmatic particles (Fretheim 1993), the paper claims that an account in terms of a direct intonational-illocutionary interface proves to have the advantage of economy.
Abstract
Sentence – or rather, utterance – intonation poses an interesting conceptual challenge for any linguistic theory that assumes a rigid separation of phonological and pragmatic representations (as assumed in current Minimalist theory), as does the interaction of structure with speech act (examined in detail by Sadock 1974). This paper seeks to demonstrate that intonation and illocutionary force all too often correlate with one another, with or without the mediation of syntactic form, and argues that this correlation warrants the hypothesis of an interface between intonation and illocutionary force, with both matches and mismatches, in continuation of the automodular view of language advocated by Sadock (1991 et seq.). Citing evidence from child language, dialectal variation, and autism research in Bangla and Hindi, besides research on Norwegian intonation and pragmatic particles (Fretheim 1993), the paper claims that an account in terms of a direct intonational-illocutionary interface proves to have the advantage of economy.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- List of contributors ix
- Introduction xiii
- Almost forever 3
- Sadock and the Performadox 23
- Expressing regret and avowing belief 35
- A story of Jerry and Bob 59
- Conventionalization in indirect speech acts 77
- Pseudo-apologies in the news 93
- Towards an intonational-illocutionary interface 107
- Atkan Aleut “unclitic” pronouns and definiteness 125
- Nominalization affixes and multi-modularity of word formation 143
- No more phology! 163
- Wait’ll (you hear) the next one 175
- Aleut case matters 193
- English derived nominals in three frameworks 213
- Out of control 229
- An automodular perspective on the frozenness of pseudoclefts, and vice versa 243
- Negation as structure building in a home sign system 261
- Constraining mismatch in grammar and in sentence comprehension 279
- Evidence for grammatical multi-modularity from a corpus of non-native essays 299
- Autolexical Grammar and language processing 315
- Topic index 337
- Name index 339
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- List of contributors ix
- Introduction xiii
- Almost forever 3
- Sadock and the Performadox 23
- Expressing regret and avowing belief 35
- A story of Jerry and Bob 59
- Conventionalization in indirect speech acts 77
- Pseudo-apologies in the news 93
- Towards an intonational-illocutionary interface 107
- Atkan Aleut “unclitic” pronouns and definiteness 125
- Nominalization affixes and multi-modularity of word formation 143
- No more phology! 163
- Wait’ll (you hear) the next one 175
- Aleut case matters 193
- English derived nominals in three frameworks 213
- Out of control 229
- An automodular perspective on the frozenness of pseudoclefts, and vice versa 243
- Negation as structure building in a home sign system 261
- Constraining mismatch in grammar and in sentence comprehension 279
- Evidence for grammatical multi-modularity from a corpus of non-native essays 299
- Autolexical Grammar and language processing 315
- Topic index 337
- Name index 339
