{"title":"Pragmatic aspects of wh-interrogatives in Marzahn German","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2024.08.003","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The following paper deals with the division of pragmatic labor between two types of <em>wh</em>-interrogatives in Marzahn German (MG). Use of the first type, marked by the enclitic particle <em>n</em> ([<em>n</em>-<span>int</span>]), is near obligatory for and confined to canonical, i.e., information-seeking question acts. The second type, lacking <em>n</em> ([∅-<span>int</span>]), has to be employed in non-canonical questions, such as rhetorical ones. This pattern of apparent markedness-reversal challenges the pretense-based approach to exam questions by Plunze and Zimmermann (2006) (Section 2) and plausibilizes an approach to information-seeking questions in terms of social cost in the sense of Levinson (2012) (Section 3.1). Overall empirical evidence, however, favors an account of <em>n</em>-marking as reinforcement of question act defaults in line with Farkas (2022) (Section 3.2). Section 5 offers a formulation of reinforcement in terms of the \"table model\" of discourse (Farkas 2022), such that the peculiar status of MG [<em>n</em>-<span>int</span>] follows from the prohibition of contextually overriding \"basic conventional discourse effects\".</p><p>In the course of the above discussion, we will scrutinize different notions of interrogative sentential force (Sections 1, 2, 5), illustrate the form and workings of several types of non-canonical questions (guess, rhetorical, echo etc.), and analyze question use in the light of institutional settings and interpersonal effects (3.3).</p></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8000,"publicationDate":"2024-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378216624001541/pdfft?md5=e0cd30aca0b2009c0b9ceca97613857a&pid=1-s2.0-S0378216624001541-main.pdf","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Pragmatics","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378216624001541","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The following paper deals with the division of pragmatic labor between two types of wh-interrogatives in Marzahn German (MG). Use of the first type, marked by the enclitic particle n ([n-int]), is near obligatory for and confined to canonical, i.e., information-seeking question acts. The second type, lacking n ([∅-int]), has to be employed in non-canonical questions, such as rhetorical ones. This pattern of apparent markedness-reversal challenges the pretense-based approach to exam questions by Plunze and Zimmermann (2006) (Section 2) and plausibilizes an approach to information-seeking questions in terms of social cost in the sense of Levinson (2012) (Section 3.1). Overall empirical evidence, however, favors an account of n-marking as reinforcement of question act defaults in line with Farkas (2022) (Section 3.2). Section 5 offers a formulation of reinforcement in terms of the "table model" of discourse (Farkas 2022), such that the peculiar status of MG [n-int] follows from the prohibition of contextually overriding "basic conventional discourse effects".
In the course of the above discussion, we will scrutinize different notions of interrogative sentential force (Sections 1, 2, 5), illustrate the form and workings of several types of non-canonical questions (guess, rhetorical, echo etc.), and analyze question use in the light of institutional settings and interpersonal effects (3.3).
期刊介绍:
Since 1977, the Journal of Pragmatics has provided a forum for bringing together a wide range of research in pragmatics, including cognitive pragmatics, corpus pragmatics, experimental pragmatics, historical pragmatics, interpersonal pragmatics, multimodal pragmatics, sociopragmatics, theoretical pragmatics and related fields. Our aim is to publish innovative pragmatic scholarship from all perspectives, which contributes to theories of how speakers produce and interpret language in different contexts drawing on attested data from a wide range of languages/cultures in different parts of the world. The Journal of Pragmatics also encourages work that uses attested language data to explore the relationship between pragmatics and neighbouring research areas such as semantics, discourse analysis, conversation analysis and ethnomethodology, interactional linguistics, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, media studies, psychology, sociology, and the philosophy of language. Alongside full-length articles, discussion notes and book reviews, the journal welcomes proposals for high quality special issues in all areas of pragmatics which make a significant contribution to a topical or developing area at the cutting-edge of research.