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Chapter 8. Evidentiality and illocutionary force

Spanish matrix que at the syntax-pragmatics interface
  • Violeta Demonte and Olga Fernández-Soriano
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Left Sentence Peripheries in Spanish
This chapter is in the book Left Sentence Peripheries in Spanish

Abstract

This paper centers on certain aspects of the syntax-semantics-pragmatics interface. Its main contribution is that it incorporates into the wide crosslinguistic list of grammatical evidentials one type of Spanish que ‘that’, which is claimed to have evolved into this category from a complementizer. To set our argument two cases are described: (i) (discourse initial) root clauses headed by que introducing a speech event (Etxepare 2007, 2010) which is reported; (ii) que-clauses reproducing previous discourse. Both descriptive and theoretical approaches group these instances of que together. We show, instead, that the first que is a “reportative evidential” while the second one is an ‘echoic’ que, a true (‘insubordinate’) complementizer, in some cases selected by a silent communication verb. The semantic and syntactic properties of both types of que are carefully described and syntactic-semantic analyses in terms of “illocutionary force” and discourse operators are proposed. Implications for the theory of the Left Periphery are also discussed.

Abstract

This paper centers on certain aspects of the syntax-semantics-pragmatics interface. Its main contribution is that it incorporates into the wide crosslinguistic list of grammatical evidentials one type of Spanish que ‘that’, which is claimed to have evolved into this category from a complementizer. To set our argument two cases are described: (i) (discourse initial) root clauses headed by que introducing a speech event (Etxepare 2007, 2010) which is reported; (ii) que-clauses reproducing previous discourse. Both descriptive and theoretical approaches group these instances of que together. We show, instead, that the first que is a “reportative evidential” while the second one is an ‘echoic’ que, a true (‘insubordinate’) complementizer, in some cases selected by a silent communication verb. The semantic and syntactic properties of both types of que are carefully described and syntactic-semantic analyses in terms of “illocutionary force” and discourse operators are proposed. Implications for the theory of the Left Periphery are also discussed.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Preface vii
  4. Introduction 1
  5. Section 1. Left Sentence Peripheries in Old Spanish
  6. Chapter 1. Left Dislocation phenomena in Old Spanish 23
  7. Chapter 2. Revisiting stylistic fronting in Old Spanish 53
  8. Chapter 3. Left forever 77
  9. Section 2. Syntactic variation in Modern Spanish
  10. Chapter 4. Spanish predicative verbless clauses and the left periphery 101
  11. Chapter 5. Fronting and contrastively focused secondary predicates in Spanish 125
  12. Chapter 6. The left periphery of Spanish comparative correlatives 155
  13. Chapter 7. The article at the left periphery 185
  14. Section 3. Syntax, semantics, and pragmatics
  15. Chapter 8. Evidentiality and illocutionary force 217
  16. Chapter 9. On the grammaticalization of the Assertion Structure 253
  17. Chapter 10. Informational status and the semantics of mood in Spanish preposed complement clauses 283
  18. Chapter 11. Fronting and irony in Spanish 309
  19. Section 4. Spanish among the Romance languages
  20. Chapter 12. Left periphery in discourse 345
  21. Chapter 13. A comparative look at Focus Fronting in Romance 383
  22. Index 419
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.214.13dem

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Preface vii
  4. Introduction 1
  5. Section 1. Left Sentence Peripheries in Old Spanish
  6. Chapter 1. Left Dislocation phenomena in Old Spanish 23
  7. Chapter 2. Revisiting stylistic fronting in Old Spanish 53
  8. Chapter 3. Left forever 77
  9. Section 2. Syntactic variation in Modern Spanish
  10. Chapter 4. Spanish predicative verbless clauses and the left periphery 101
  11. Chapter 5. Fronting and contrastively focused secondary predicates in Spanish 125
  12. Chapter 6. The left periphery of Spanish comparative correlatives 155
  13. Chapter 7. The article at the left periphery 185
  14. Section 3. Syntax, semantics, and pragmatics
  15. Chapter 8. Evidentiality and illocutionary force 217
  16. Chapter 9. On the grammaticalization of the Assertion Structure 253
  17. Chapter 10. Informational status and the semantics of mood in Spanish preposed complement clauses 283
  18. Chapter 11. Fronting and irony in Spanish 309
  19. Section 4. Spanish among the Romance languages
  20. Chapter 12. Left periphery in discourse 345
  21. Chapter 13. A comparative look at Focus Fronting in Romance 383
  22. Index 419
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