28 Satztyp und Modalpartikeln

Thurmair, Maria

doi:10.1515/9783110224832.627

Cited by 28 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…As a first approximation, German modal particles tell us something about our general inventory of basic (or 'major') sentence types. It is often claimed that sentence-type sensitivity is a defining property of modal particles (e.g., Thurmair 2013 (35) demonstrates that modal particles are restricted to specific sentence types. In our case, denn can only occur in interrogatives (35a) and not in imperatives (35b) or declaratives (35c).…”

Section: German A-excs and The Distribution Of Modal Particlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

How cool is that! A new ‘construction’ and its theoretical challenges

Trotzke

2020

J Comp German Linguistics

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This paper deals with the controversial connection between sentence type and illocutionary force. I focus on wh-configurations of the form How cool is that! and demonstrate that this recent phenomenon presents some interesting challenges to approaches that are concerned with the illocutionary potential of sentence forms. In particular, the exclamation component of How cool is that! cannot be derived from features of exclamative syntax, but rather is a cumulative effect of exclamative intonation, the respective adjective, and the degree reading of how. However, the V-to-C-movement property results in a special pragmatics that proper exclamatives (i.e., without V-to-C movement: How cool that is!) lack. I claim that How cool is that! asks for affirmation or objection on the part of the addressee, and that this addressee-oriented component is signaled by a dedicated class of modal particles in the German version(s) of How cool is that! To analyze these addressee-oriented exclamations (A-EXCs), I adopt a syntactic approach to the connection between sentence types and their potential illocutionary uses and thus argue that this connection is by no means arbitrary and unrestricted. I show that both the special pragmatic function of How cool is that! and the corresponding distribution of modal particles in the German counterparts can be accounted for by referring to a compositional conception of sentence-type meanings, and I hence disagree with recent approaches that deal with How cool is that! and its counterparts in German as constructions (i.e., arbitrary form-function mappings) only.

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Section: German A-excs and The Distribution Of Modal Particlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

How cool is that! A new ‘construction’ and its theoretical challenges

Trotzke

2020

J Comp German Linguistics

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“…Kwon (2005: 230) argues the same, even though he himself provides examples of its usage in the ob-verb-final sentence type format (2005: 117). In Thurmair (2013), denn in the ob-verbfinal sentence type format is accepted as long as the ob-clauses are used to render indirect speech. 4 For an overview of arguments from both perspectives, see Thurmair (1989: 202).…”

Section: Definition Of Sentence Type Sentence Mood and Illocutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…;Jacobs 2008: 31;Thurmair 2013: 637). Altmann (1989;1993), Jacobs (2008) and Thurmair (2013) consider mps as a constitutive feature of certain sentence types. As constitutive features they would belong to the formside of the description of those sentence types since in these cases it seems to be more important that a suitable mp is used than which one of the suitable mps is actually chosen.…”

Section: The Role Of Formal Factors In the Usage Restrictions Of Modamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, the choice of one mp over another in (12b) does not seem to be accompanied by any meaning contrast, as it is normally the case when there is a choice between different mps; instead, any compatible mp functions equally to create an optative interpretation of the sentence: In this last case, the mps do not only influence the illocutionary interpretation function of their host utterance, but even seem to be obligatory formal features for constituting a certain sentence type in the first place (cf. Jacobs 2008;Thurmair 2013). This role of mps applies mostly to the "marginal" optative and exclamative sentence types, but Altmann (1993) and Thurmair (2013) also discuss obligatory mps for some sentence types with a subordinate clause format (i.e.…”

Section: Modal Particles As Illocutionary Operatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If the mp is missing, there is an increased need for other signals to help clarify the linguistic format. Because Thurmair (2013) holds that mps mainly fulfil illocutionary functions, she distinguishes between sentence-mood modifying functions (in sentence types belonging to the basic sentence moods) and sentence-mood identifying functions of mps (in marginal sentence types belonging to the optative and exclamative sentence moods).…”

Section: Modal Particles As Illocutionary Operatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Modal particles and sentence type restrictions: A construction grammar perspective

Alm

Behr

Fischer

2018

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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The problem addressed in this study is the sentence type restrictions of modal particles. In the literature on modal particles, it is often noted that these items cannot occur freely in all kinds of sentence types, but are restricted to certain grammatical host structures. In this article, we first discuss previous work on the semantic, formal and functional factors that determine the usage of modal particles in different grammatical configurations. The results of this discussion show that a fine-grained representation on several different levels of both modal particles and their grammatical environments is necessary to account for the usage restrictions, which is why we turn to a construction grammatical description. In particular, we suggest that the sentence type restrictions of modal particles are the result of a complex interaction between the individual modal particle on the one hand and specific grammatical constructions on the other hand. In this paper, we focus on constructions of the kind encoding particular speech act orientations, namely sentence type constructions. We explore this interaction from a construction grammatical perspective.

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Modality in Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics

Abraham¹

2020

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What do we mean when we say things like 'If only we knew what he was up to!' Clearly this is more than just a message, or a question to our addressee. We are expressing simultaneously that we don't know, and also that we wish to know. Several modes of encoding contribute to such modalities of expression: word order, subordinating subjunctions, sentences that are subordinated but nevertheless occur autonomously, and attitudinal discourse adverbs which, far beyond lexical adverbials of modality, allow the speaker and the listener to presuppose full agreement, partial agreement under presupposed conditions, or negotiation of common ground. This state of the art survey proposes a new model of modality, drawing on data from a variety of Germanic and Slavic languages to find out what is cross-linguistically universal about modality, and to argue that it is a constitutive part of human cognition.

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28 Satztyp und Modalpartikeln

Cited by 28 publications

References 0 publications

How cool is that! A new ‘construction’ and its theoretical challenges

How cool is that! A new ‘construction’ and its theoretical challenges

Modal particles and sentence type restrictions: A construction grammar perspective

Modality in Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics

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