Get fulltext from our e-platform
Discourse Particles
Syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and historical aspects
Discourse particles have often been treated as a phenomenon restricted to Germanic languages (Abraham 2020) and they still raise questions about their nature as an independent category. This book reveals that this phenomenon exists in other languages as well, and provides evidence for their nature as a separate category. The volume brings together a collection of nine papers that focus on three research topics: a) the diachronic development of discourse particles; b) their syntactic analysis; and c) the study of their semantic-pragmatics. Furthermore, it also discusses other issues less often dealt with in the literature but of great interest for linguistic theory, such as the acquisition of discourse particles by children or the analysis of elements not usually considered discourse particles but whose historical path or microvariation indicates otherwise. Additionally, the book offers a cross-linguistic perspective as it discusses various languages including Basque, Catalan, German, Italian, Laz, Mandarin Chinese, Old English, Portuguese, and Spanish.
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 276] 2022. vi, 258 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 20 April 2022
Published online on 20 April 2022
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
- Introduction: Discourse particles: syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and historical aspectsXabier Artiagoitia, Arantzazu Elordieta and Sergio Monforte | pp. 1–10
- Part I. Diachronic issues and the development of discourse particles
- Chapter 1. On the adverbial origin of German modal particlesMarco Coniglio | pp. 13–40
- Chapter 2. A particle-like use of hwæþer Wisdom’s questions in BoethiusRegine Eckardt and George Walkden | pp. 41–64
- Chapter 3. The discourse particle es que in Spanish and in other Iberian languagesManuel Pérez-Saldanya and José Ignacio Hualde | pp. 65–98
- Part II. Syntactic analyses of discourse particles
- Chapter 4. Agreeing complementizers may just be moodyÖmer Demirok and Balkız Öztürk | pp. 101–130
- Chapter 5. Outer particles vs tag particles: A distinction in homophonyAitor Lizardi Ituarte | pp. 131–156
- Chapter 6. Anchoring primary and secondary interjections to the contextNicola Munaro | pp. 157–178
- Chapter 7. Sentence-final particles in Mandarin Chinese: Syntax, semantics and acquisitionWaltraud Paul and Shanshan Yan | pp. 179–206
- Part III. The semantic-pragmatics of discourse particles
- Chapter 8. Meaning and use of the Basque particle bideKepa Korta and Larraitz Zubeldia | pp. 209–228
- Chapter 9. Three German discourse particles as speech act modifiersJohannes Schneider | pp. 229–254
- Language index | pp. 255–256
- Subject index | pp. 257–258
“Everything considered, this volume makes a significant contribution to the study of DPs and their functional relatives. Researchers at various levels and persuasions, especially those specializing in pragmatics, will benefit from reading it.”
Seongha Rhee, Mahidol University, in Journal of Pragmatics 211 (2023).
Cited by (1)
Cited by one other publication
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 24 february 2026. 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.