Volume 61, Issue 2 - Special Issue: Expressions of quotation: Explorations on the boundary between use and mention; Guest Editors: Holden Härtl and Marcel Schlechtweg

In this introduction, we outline the notion of quotation and shed light on the question of how quotations and the different readings quotations adopt can be theoretically implemented with a particular focus on the semantic-pragmatic interface. We then present the individual contributions to this special issue and how they contribute new observations from various theoretical angles to the general issues revolving around the topic of quotation as an interface phenomenon.

Two major types of quotation theories can be distinguished according to whether they regard marks of quotation as necessary (type-1) or not necessary (type-2) for quotation. I argue that taken at face value, the empirical evidence disqualifies type-1 theories. I then show that even if we accept that surface appearances can be deceptive – ‘unmarked’ quotations are simply not quotations, or absent marks are underlain by marks in hidden syntactic structure – type-1 theories still prove inadequate. By contrast, a particular form of type-2 theory, depiction theory , is consistent with the empirical evidence, proves compatible with syntactic analyses that posit a covert quotative operator, and is equipped to account for the grammatically deviant behavior of certain categories of quotations.

The paper is concerned with a particular nickname construction in German in which a linguistic expression is inserted between the given name and surname and enclosed by quotation marks ( Johanna „Hansi“ Angermeier ) or parentheses ( Ursula (Uschi) Vollmuth ). The apparent interchangeability of quotation marks and parentheses in the construction raises the question of the exact meaning of the (variants of the) construction and what the respective punctuation marks contribute to this meaning. The aim of the paper is to develop a comprehensive account of the variation by unfolding the complex interplay between syntax, punctuation, and pragmatics in the meaning constitution of the construction. Based on a close linguistic analysis of examples from a corpus of death notices and supplemented by recent graphematic and pragmatic accounts on punctuation marks, the view is developed that the choice of quotation marks and parentheses is governed by two different, independent processes which partly overlap in the construction. While both quotation marks and parentheses play a role in marking an underlying parenthetical structure, quotation marks are richer in meaning, triggering an additional context shift effect and further conversational implicatures. The analysis lends support to the view that parentheses are boundary signals operating on syntactic structure, while quotation marks are boundary signals operating on the meaning of linguistic expressions.

Quotation marks are used for different purposes in language, one of which is to signal that something has to be interpreted in an ironic way, as in the utterance What a “nice” day! said on a rainy and cold day. The present contribution describes a reading time experiment in which we analyzed the processing and understanding of ironic written sentences with or without quotation marks and asked whether and how these marks affect the subjects’ reading of the sentences. Native speakers of English were exposed to two contexts and a subsequent target sentence. Semantically, context and target sentences were connected either ironically or literally or were entirely unrelated. Each of these three meaning conditions contained quotation marks or not. Within the target sentences, which were identical across the different conditions, we measured the reading time before the respective meaning (ironic, literal, unrelated) was revealed, at the phrase that made the scenario ironic, literal, or unrelated, and at the end of the sentence. Furthermore, having read the target sentence, subjects rated how well this sentence fit the preceding context, and the time they needed for their judgment was recorded as well. Results clearly show that quotation marks increase the processing burden first, independently of the meaning specification in a sentence, but then play a crucial and beneficial role in the processing and recognition of irony. We reflect upon these findings against the background of semantic and pragmatic theories of quotation.

Sign languages make use of the full expressive power of the visual-gestural modality to report the utterances and/or actions of another person. A signer can shift into the perspective of one or more persons and reproduce the utterances or actions from the perspective of these persons. This modality-specific device of utterance and action report is called role shift or constructed action. Especially in sign language narration, role shift is a productive and expressive means that can be used to demonstrate linguistic and non-linguistic actions. Recent developments in sign language linguistics put forth new formal semantic analyses of role shift at the interface between sign language and gesture, integrating insights from classical cognitive and formal analyses of quotation, demonstration and perspective/context shift in spoken and sign languages. In this article, I build on recent accounts of role shift as a modality-specific device of demonstration and show that a modified version of this theory even accounts for cases of complex demonstrations including hybrid demonstrations, multiple demonstrations and demonstrations involving a complex interaction of gestural and linguistic components.

The aim of this article is to propose a formal semantic account of scare quotation (SQ). I present data showing that SQ, though flexible, is subject to regular and so far largely unnoticed limitations following from the infelicitous use of irony as well as the division between at-issue and not-at-issue content parts. While these effects can hardly be accounted for by assuming that the ironic aspect of SQ involves negation, they are in harmony with basic properties of deontic modality. I formulate a deontic modal account of SQ which not only predicts the complex behaviour of SQ, but also sheds much new light on the formal nature of irony.