Abstract
This study examines hypothetical manner (HM) clauses in spoken English and Dutch. In both languages, HM clauses can assume different levels of grammatical and discursive (in)dependence, and different semantic-pragmatic functions. This study examines whether the grammatical-discursive configurations that English and Dutch allow for are associated with different prosodic profiles. To this end, the study investigates not just prosodic integration of the clause in the same intonation unit as the main/previous clause, but also potential pitch resets (or downsteps) at the start of the clause, average amount of pausing before the clause, and the pitch contour with which the clause is uttered. The study finds that, while syntactic status and semantic-pragmatic function interact, syntactic status is generally the better predictor of the prosodic realisation of the clause. Among syntactically independent clauses, few differences are found between discursively independent clauses (‘stand-alone insubordinates’) and discursively dependent ones (‘dependency shifts’). We argue, therefore, that these two clause types are similar from a communicative viewpoint, both marking ‘fresh starts’ in the discourse. Finally, the many observed similarities between English and Dutch indicate that meaningful generalisations can be made about the interactions between grammatical, discursive and prosodic profiles, at least for the two languages under investigation.
Acknowledgments
The research reported on in this article was made possible by the research grant ‘How do grammar and discourse interact? Answers from subordination, coordination and insubordination’ (PDR T.0065.20) (promoters: Liesbeth Degand and An Van linden), awarded by the F.R.S.-FNRS. We sincerely thank the two anonymous referees for their very substantial reports, making many helpful suggestions to improve this study.
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Data repository: The dataset underlying this article can be found on the ULiège Dataverse, the institutional FAIR data repository of the University of Liège: https://doi.org/10.58119/ULG/3VC5EX.
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Artikel in diesem Heft
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- Laryngealized vowels in Yánesha’: a phonetic description and subsegmental analysis
- As if grammar, discourse and prosody don’t interact: a comparative study of hypothetical manner clauses in English and Dutch
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- Book Reviews
- Ryan Nefdt: Language, Science, and Structure
- Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen & Kazuhiro Teruya: Systemic Functional Linguistics: A Complete Guide
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Detecting angloversal tendencies in the outer circle: a pilot study on a Maltese English speaker
- On the construal of MUSIC IS MOTION metaphor
- Multifunctionality matters: preverbal yǒu in Mandarin and its aspectual potential
- Voice, impersonal construction, and zero lexeme: formalization of crucial notions
- Comparison of micro- and macro- structural narrative features between Turkish-Kurdish bilinguals and Turkish monolinguals
- Quantifier float in Hmong
- Non-canonical quantification in Old Persian: the adverb vasai̯
- Intransitive clause word order in Neo-Aramaic: information structure, pragmatics and word order shifts
- How grammatical constructions contribute to responsibility attribution in GBV coverage: a corpus-assisted study
- Middle voice in Cháoyáng Mǐn
- Constructing a web-accessible lexical database for core Tongan vocabulary
- Beyond hypothetical manner: a functional typology of insubordinate como si-clauses
- Numeral systems in Lezgic languages
- Revisiting Hittite prayer lexicon: a focus on heteroclitic nouns and light verb constructions
- Presupposition: accepted information or embraced beliefs? The role of informative function and trigger type in separating two levels of accommodation
- Laryngealized vowels in Yánesha’: a phonetic description and subsegmental analysis
- As if grammar, discourse and prosody don’t interact: a comparative study of hypothetical manner clauses in English and Dutch
- A corpus-based behavioral profile analysis of polysemy and antonymy: the case of the ancient Greek size adjectives mikrós and mégas
- Book Reviews
- Ryan Nefdt: Language, Science, and Structure
- Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen & Kazuhiro Teruya: Systemic Functional Linguistics: A Complete Guide