Surprise is treated as an affect in Aristotelian philosophy as well as in Cartesian philosophy. In experimental psychology, surprise is considered to be an emotion. In phenomenology, it is only addressed indirectly (Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas), with the important exception of Ricœur and Maldiney;… read more
Edited by Dalila Ayoun, Agnès Celle and Laure Lansari
After an introductory chapter that provides an overview to theoretical issues in tense, aspect, modality and evidentiality, this volume presents a variety of original contributions that are firmly empirically-grounded based on elicited or corpus data, while adopting different theoretical frameworks. read more
Among emotions, surprise has been extensively studied in psychology. In linguistics, surprise, like other emotions, has mainly been studied through the syntactic patterns involving surprise lexemes. However, little has been done so far to correlate the reaction of surprise investigated in… read more
This set of eleven articles, by linguists from four different European countries and a variety of theoretical backgrounds, takes a new look at the discourse functions of a number of English connectives, from simple coordinators (and, but) to phrases of varying complexity (after all, the fact is… read more
This chapter aims to show how questions shape interactivity in TED talks, i.e. in a non-dialogical discourse where commitment updates cannot be regulated by turn-taking. It is argued that the interactional contribution of questions is restricted to discourse-management functions. The majority of… read more
What is aspectual meaning without a verb? Focusing on sentences in which the typical marker of aspectual meaning – the verb constellation – is absent, we use translations to explore the aspectual meaning pragmatically implicated by verbless sentences. Retrieved automatically, they were analyzed… read more
Verbal reactions to surprising situations or surprising information often include interrogative structures rather than exclamatives, contrary to what is assumed in traditional grammars. In such contexts, interrogatives combine requests for information and the expression of surprise (possibly… read more
This chapter offers an analysis of two types of interrogatives used as indirect speech acts in surprise contexts in English – unresolvable questions and rhetorical questions. The function of these questions is not to request information that is unknown to the speaker. It is argued that… read more
This paper is an introduction to this special issue on the description and expression of surprise. In line with the ANR-funded project it is part of, this volume aims to bridge the gap between emotion, cognition and linguistics. It stresses the unique status of surprise among emotions, uncovering… read more
This paper re-examines the well-established distinction between expression and description of emotion as regards surprise. First, the authors show that the expression of surprise does not involve the use of surprise lexemes, but rather mirative utterances and specific syntactic constructions (while… read more
This paper is an introduction to this special issue on the description and expression of surprise. In line with the ANR-funded project it is part of, this volume aims to bridge the gap between emotion, cognition and linguistics. It stresses the unique status of surprise among emotions, uncovering… read more
The present contrastive English-French case study examines interactions in which an unexpected factor triggers a verbal reaction of surprise, hence affecting a speaker’s level of certainty. We focus on why-would questions in English and their equivalents in French and analyse them from a pragmatic… read more
This paper presents a contrastive study of modal adverbs in English and French, with a focus on a few pairs such as évidemment vs. ‘obviously’, apparemment vs. ‘apparently’. The relation between inference and epistemic modality is discussed both semantically and syntactically. Modal adverbs license… read more
This paper presents a contrastive study of modal adverbs in English and French, with a focus on a few pairs such as évidemment vs. ‘obviously’, apparemment vs. ‘apparently’. The relation between inference and epistemic modality is discussed both semantically and syntactically. Modal adverbs… read more
This paper presents a semantic treatment of the modal uses of the future tense and the conditional in French and a comparison with their English translations. It is argued that the future and the conditional convey the speaker’s commitment and non-commitment respectively, regardless of how… read more
The future tense in French and the modal auxiliary will in English can both express conjecture. This use is generally considered marginal compared to that of referring to future time. A unified analysis of the French future tense and of English will needs, however, to be able to account for the… read more
