Cover not available

In:Discourse-oriented Syntax
Edited by Josef Bayer, Roland Hinterhölzl and Andreas Trotzke
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 226] 2015
► pp. 41–70

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

On the interpretation of modal particles in non-assertive speech acts in German and Bellunese

 | University Ca’Foscari, Venezia
 | University Ca’Foscari, Venezia
Published online: 16 December 2015
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.226.03hin
In this article, we analyze the syntactic and semantic properties of modal particles appearing in non-assertive speech acts in German and in Bellunese. We propose that modal particles in exclamations and special questions function as evidential markers interacting with the evaluative component to derive the diverse expressive meanings. In order to provide an adequate syntactic account of the distribution of these particles, we propose that they occupy head positions in Bellunese, but are specifiers of their respective functional projections in German, and that their semantic impact requires the syntactic representation of separate evaluational and evidential phrases pertaining to speaker and hearer as well as the syntactic representation of the speech act operator. The intrinsic relation between the evidence of a discourse participant and his evaluation is made visible by the interaction of modal particles in evidential projections and an autosegmental intonational morpheme in the evaluative projection in German and by a paradigm of minimal oppositions of particles occupying the evidential projections in Bellunese.
References (35)
References
Abraham, Werner. 2010. Diskurspartikeln zwischen Modalität, Modus und Fremdbewußtseins-abgleich. In 40 Jahre Partikelforschung, Theo Harden & Elke Hentschel (eds), 33-77. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Aikhenvald, Alexandra. 2004. Evidentiality. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bartels, Christine. 1999. The Intonation of English Statements and Questions: A Compositional Interpretation. New York NY: Garland.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Batliner, Anton. 1988. Der Exklamativ: Mehr als Aussage oder doch nur mehr oder weniger Aussage? Experimente zur Höhe und Position des F0-Gipfels. In Intonationsforschungen, Hans Altmann (ed.), 243-271. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bayer, Josef & Obenauer, Hans-Georg. 2011. Discourse particles, clause structure, and question types. The Linguistic Review 28: 449-491. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Büring, Daniel. 1997. The Meaning of Topic and Focus: The 59th Street Bridge Accent. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cardinaletti, Anna. 2011. German and Italian modal particles and clause structure. The Linguistic Review 28: 493-531. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Coniglio, Marco. 2009. Deutsche Modalpartikeln in Haupt- und Nebensätzen. In Modalität. Epistemik und Evidentialität bei Modalverb, Adverb, Modalpartikel und Modus, Werner Abraham & Elisabeth Leiss (eds), 191-221. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011. Die Syntax der deutschen Modalpartikeln: Ihre Distribution und Lizenzierung in Haupt- und Nebensätzen. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
D’Avis, Franz-Josef. 2014. Exklamativsatz. In Handbuch der Satztypen des Deutschen, Hans Altmann, Jörg Meibauer & Markus Steinbach (eds), 171-201. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
De Lancey, Scott. 2001. The mirative and evidentiality. Journal of Pragmatics 33: 369-382. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Giorgi, Alessandra. 2010. About the Speaker: Towards a Syntax of Indexicality. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grosz, Patrick. 2011. German particles, modality, and the semantics of imperatives. In Proceedings of NELS 39, Suzi Lima, Kevin Mullin & Brian Smith (eds), 323-336. Amherst MA: GLSA.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kaplan, David. 1999. The Meaning of ouch and oops. Talk presented at the Cornell Conference on Theories of Context Dependency .
Krifka, Manfred. 2013. Response particles and discourse particles: ja, doch and eben. Talk presented at the Workshop on the role of modal particles in diverse speech acts , 3-4 October 2013, Venice.
. 2014. Embedding illocutionary acts. In Recursion: Complexity in Cognition, Thomas Roeper & Margaret Speas (eds), 125-155. Berlin: Springer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lasersohn, Peter. 2005. Context dependence, disagreement and predicates of personal taste. Linguistics and Philosophy 28: 643-686. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Munaro, Nicola. 1999. Sintagmi interrogativi nei dialetti italiani settentrionali. Padua: Unipress.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Munaro, Nicola & Obenauer, Hans-Georg. 1999. On underspecified wh-elements in pseudo-interrogatives. University of Venice Working Papers in Linguistics 9: 181-253.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Munaro, Nicola & Poletto, Cecilia. 2008. Sentential particles and clausal typing in Venetian dialects. In Dislocated Elements in Discourse: Syntactic, Semantic and Pragmatic Perspectives, Benjamin Shaer, Philippa Cook, Werner Frey & Claudia Maienborn (eds), 173-199. New York NY: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Obenauer, Hans-Georg. 1994. Aspects de la syntaxe A-barre. Thèse de Doctorat d’Etat, University of Paris VIII.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2004. Nonstandard wh-questions and alternative checkers in Pagotto. In Syntax and Semantics of the Left Periphery, Horst Lohnstein & Susanne Trissler (eds), 343-384. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Oppenrieder, Wilhelm. 1987. Aussagesätze im Deutschen. In Satzmodus zwischen Grammatik und Pragmatik, Jörg Meibauer (ed.), 161-189. Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1989. Selbständige Verb-Letzt-Sätze. In Zur Intonation von Modus und Fokus im Deutschen, Hans Altmann, Anton Batliner & Wilhelm Oppenrieder (eds), 163- 244. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Poletto, Cecilia & Zanuttini, Raffaella. 2003. Making Imperatives: Evidence from Central Rhaetoromance. In The Syntax of Italian Dialects, Christina Tortora (ed.), 175-207. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010. Sentential particles and remnant movement. In Mapping the Left Periphery, Paola Benincà & Nicola Munaro (eds), 201-227. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Potts, Christopher. 2005. The Logic of Conventional Implicatures. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rett, Jessica. 2011. Exclamatives, degrees and speech acts. Proceedings of SALT XVIII . Ithaca NY: CLC Publications.
Rizzi, Luigi. 1997. The fine structure of the left periphery. In Elements of Grammar, Liliane Haegeman (ed.), 281-337. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Roberts, Craige. 1996. Information structure in discourse: Towards an integrated formal theory of pragmatics. Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics 49: 91-136.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Speas, Margaret & Tenny, Carol. 2003. Configurational properties of point of view roles. In Asymmetry in Grammar, Vol.1: Syntax and Semantics [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 57], Anna Maria Di Sciullo (ed.), 315-344. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Truckenbrodt, Hubert. 2004. Zur Strukturbedeutung von Interrogativsätzen. Linguistische Berichte 199: 313-350.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013. An analysis of prosodic F-effects in interrogatives: Prosody, syntax and semantics. Lingua 124: 131-175. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zaefferer, Dietmar. 1983. The semantics of non-declaratives: Investigating German exclamatories. In Meaning, Use, and Interpretation of Language, Rainer Bäuerle, Christoph Schwarze & Arnim von Stechow (eds), 466-490. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zimmermann, Malte. 2011. Discourse particles. In Semantics, Klaus von Heusinger, Claudia Maienborn & Paul Portner (eds), 2011-2038. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (28)

Cited by 28 other publications

Hinterhölzl, Roland
2025. Some notes on the role of modal particles in weil+V2-clauses in German. Folia Linguistica 59:1 ► pp. 145 ff. DOI logo
De Cristofaro, Elisa, Linda Badan & Adriana Belletti
2024. Discourse markers in L1 and L2 Italian: A cartographic analysis of the sentence-internal position. Second Language Research 40:3 ► pp. 643 ff. DOI logo
Fiorini, Matteo
2024. Biased interrogatives in Camuno. Open Linguistics 10:1 DOI logo
Giorgi, Alessandra & Erika Petrocchi
2024. A cross-cultural analysis of the gestural pattern of surprise and surprise-disapproval questions. Intercultural Pragmatics 21:3 ► pp. 307 ff. DOI logo
Trotzke, Andreas
2023. Non-Canonical Questions, DOI logo
Artiagoitia, Xabier, Arantzazu Elordieta & Sergio Monforte
2022. Introduction. In Discourse Particles [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 276], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Cognola, Federica, Manuela Caterina Moroni & Ermenegildo Bidese
2022. A comparative study of German auch and Italian anche . In Particles in German, English and Beyond [Studies in Language Companion Series, 224], ► pp. 209 ff. DOI logo
Corr, Alice
2022. Conclusions. In The Grammar of the Utterance, ► pp. 299 ff. DOI logo
Corr, Alice
2022. The expression of affect. In The Grammar of the Utterance, ► pp. 157 ff. DOI logo
Corr, Alice
2022. Interjections and particles. In The Grammar of the Utterance, ► pp. 99 ff. DOI logo
Corr, Alice
2022. A grammar for the utterance. In The Grammar of the Utterance, ► pp. 15 ff. DOI logo
Corr, Alice
2022. The grammar of dialogue. In The Grammar of the Utterance, ► pp. 251 ff. DOI logo
Corr, Alice
2022. Introduction. In The Grammar of the Utterance, ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Corr, Alice
2022. Doing things with utterance grammar. In The Grammar of the Utterance, ► pp. 135 ff. DOI logo
Corr, Alice
2022. Vocatives. In The Grammar of the Utterance, ► pp. 51 ff. DOI logo
Corr, Alice
2022. Utterances without commitment. In The Grammar of the Utterance, ► pp. 203 ff. DOI logo
Corr, Alice
2022. The Grammar of the Utterance, DOI logo
Cognola, Federica & Silvio Cruschina
2021. Between Time and Discourse A Syntactic Analysis of Italianpoi. Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie occidentale :55 DOI logo
Badan, Linda
2020. Italian Discourse Markers: The Case ofGuarda te*. Studia Linguistica 74:2 ► pp. 303 ff. DOI logo
Colasanti, Valentina & Giuseppina Silvestri
2019. Matrix complementizers in Italo-Romance. In Italian Dialectology at the Interfaces [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 251], ► pp. 155 ff. DOI logo
Munaro, Nicola
2019. On the syntactic encoding of lexical interjections in Italo-Romance. In Italian Dialectology at the Interfaces [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 251], ► pp. 185 ff. DOI logo
Munaro, Nicola
2022. Anchoring primary and secondary interjections to the context. In Discourse Particles [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 276], ► pp. 157 ff. DOI logo
Munaro, Nicola
2025. The grammaticalization path of Latin post across the Dolomitic region. Linguistic Variation DOI logo
Cruschina, Silvio & Eva-Maria Remberger
2018. Speaker-oriented syntax and root clause complementizers. Linguistic Variation 18:2 ► pp. 336 ff. DOI logo
Bayer, Josef & Andreas Trotzke
2015. The derivation and interpretation of left peripheral discourse particles. In Discourse-oriented Syntax [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 226], ► pp. 13 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2022. General Preface. In The Grammar of the Utterance, ► pp. vii ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2022. List of Abbreviations. In The Grammar of the Utterance, ► pp. xi ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2022. Copyright Page. In The Grammar of the Utterance, ► pp. iv ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 22 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue