This article analyzes Knowledge Confirmation Questions (KCQ) in Basque, an instance of non-canonical questions that has not been analyzed yet. KCQs display three characteristic elements, namely, (i) a declarative-type syntax, (ii) an interrogative-like intonation, and (iii) the discourse particle ba; and are interpreted as follows: “Do you know that p?”. Here, I propose that the meaning contribution of KCQs derives from the interaction of these three elements. More precisely, I argue that their question-like intonation, which adds interrogative interpretation, takes scope over ba, which regulates the addressee’s Doxastic State and undergoes context shift. Basque KCQs constitute an interesting case study, because they raise some interesting questions on the syntactization of discourse and the properties of discourse particles, as they seem to contradict the assumption that discourse particles do not fall under the scope of sentential operators.

In this paper, we investigate focus markers in Catalan that can take on discourse-particle readings. We focus on two Catalan elements that have not been studied from a formal linguistics perspective so far: the focus adverb precisament ‘precisely’ and the focus particle també ‘also’. We demonstrate that these elements feature interpretations that we identify as a type of meaning familiar from discourse particles in languages other than Catalan. After having outlined the basic distribution and interpretative effects of these particles, we analyze the semantics and pragmatics of precisament and també within a probabilistic argumentative framework, and we then conclude the paper by comparing the observations and analyses we have pointed out for Catalan to other languages that feature a discourse-particle reading of similar focus markers.

Discourse particles are among the most commented-upon features of Colloquial Singapore English (CSE). Their use has been shown to vary depending on formality, context, gender and ethnicity, although results differ from one study to another. This study uses the Corpus of Singapore English Messages (CoSEM), a large-scale corpus of texts composed by Singaporeans and sent using electronic messaging services, to investigate gender and ethnic factors as predictors of particle use. The results suggest a strong gender effect as well as several particle-specific ethnic effects. More generally, our study underlines the special nature of the grammatical class of discourse particles in CSE, which is open to new additions as the sociolinguistic and pragmatic need for them develops.

This article examines the syntax and semantics of please. Using a mainstream generative syntactic framework, I propose that syntactically integrated please is a discourse marker that marks the clause in which it occurs as a request. Please may appear clause-initially or clause-medially as determined by a number of factors, including clause type, modality, negation and the application of ellipsis. There is also a homophonous marker please that occurs in clause-final position; clause-final please does not mark requests per se but ‘bonds’ a speaker and addressee, reinforcing their relationship as requester and requestee. This analysis of please provides support for syntactic approaches to speech act structure, particularly the claim that illocutionary force is part of narrow syntax rather than a solely pragmatic phenomenon. The article provides support for pursuing a model of the syntax–discourse interface in which interactions between discourse markers and clause-internal functional elements, such as mood and modality, form the interface between syntax and discourse.

The paper proposes a refined analysis of the semantics and pragmatics of the Norwegian non-truth-conditional adverb jo ‘after all, of course’. According to the literature, jo indicates that the proposition is ‘given’ in some sense or other. Based on new empirical investigations, we argue that the Relevance-theoretic notion mutual manifestness (Sperber & Wilson 1986/1995, Blass 2000) accurately captures the givenness aspect of jo, and we demonstrate through authentic examples what it means for a proposition to be mutually manifest. In addition to mutual manifestness, jo signals that the proposition is a premise for deriving a conclusion. The conclusion often – but not always – opposes someone’s view. We argue that the frequent opposition interpretations are a consequence of the nature of the procedures encoded by jo. In addition to clarifying the semantic and pragmatic properties of jo, the paper sheds light on the Relevance-theoretic notion procedural semantics as well as illustrating its usefulness in the study of pragmatic particles.

Mirative expressions, which mark surprising information (DeLancey 1997), are often expressed through linguistic forms that are also used to encode other, seemingly unrelated, meanings – e.g. evidential markers that mark lack of direct evidence (Turkish: Slobin & Aksu 1982, Peterson 2010; Cheyenne: Rett & Murray 2013; Cuzco Quechua: Faller 2002; Ostyak: Nikolaeva 1999; among others). In this paper, we show that the English particle like features a parallel polysemy between a mirative use and its better-known hedging use, which expresses weakened commitment to the strict denotation of a linguistic expression. After presenting several diagnostics that point to a genuine empirical difference between the hedging and mirative functions of like, we propose that both uses widen the size of a contextually restricted set, admitting elements that were previously excluded. More specifically, hedging like expands the set of ‘similar enough’ interpretations that we can apply to a linguistic expression in a context, including interpretations that we would normally consider to be too different from the context at hand. Mirative like, on the other hand, expands the set of worlds that we are willing to consider as candidates for the actual world in the conversation, resulting in the inclusion of worlds that interlocutors have previously ruled out due to perceived outlandishness. We therefore suggest that the two uses are best treated as sharing a common semantic kernel, deriving hedging and mirativity as effects of the particular type of object to which like applies.

Recent developments in grammatical theory seem to invite an integration of grammar and interaction; nevertheless, there are reservations on both sides. While some of these reservations can be traced to misconceptions, others are deeply rooted in the theoretical premises of each approach. The differences are, however, not very well understood; especially theoretical premises regarding the role of cognition in language use have been hindering a fruitful collaboration. Reinterpreting the results of Conversation Analysis (CA; cf. Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974; Sacks, 1992) in terms of Construction Grammar (Goldberg, 1995, 2006; Croft, 2001, Langacker, 2008) recasts the discursive practices identified in CA in terms of participants’ cognitive construals of the communicative situation, making the speaking subjects apparent in their strategies and conceptualizations of the interaction.