Modality and Theory of Mind Elements across Languages

Modality and Theory of Mind Elements across Languages PDF Author: Werner Abraham
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110271079
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 470

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Book Description
Modality is the way a speaker modifies her declaratives and other speech acts to optimally assess the common ground of knowledge and belief of the addressee with the aim to optimally achieve understanding and an assessment of relevant information exchange. In languages such as German (and other Germanic languages outside of English), this may happen in covert terms. Main categories used for this purpose are modal adverbials ("modal particles") and modal verbs. Epistemic uses of modal verbs (like German sollen) cover evidential (reportative) information simultaneously providing the source of the information. Methodologically, description and explanation rest on Karl Bühler's concept of Origo as well as Roman Jakobson's concept of shifter. Typologically, East Asian languages such as Japanese pursue these semasiological fundaments far more closely than the European languages. In particular, Japanese has to mark the source of a statement in the declarative mode such that the reliability may be assessed by the hearer. The contributions in this collection provide insight into these modal techniques.

Modality and Theory of Mind Elements across Languages

Modality and Theory of Mind Elements across Languages PDF Author: Werner Abraham
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110271079
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 470

Get Book Here

Book Description
Modality is the way a speaker modifies her declaratives and other speech acts to optimally assess the common ground of knowledge and belief of the addressee with the aim to optimally achieve understanding and an assessment of relevant information exchange. In languages such as German (and other Germanic languages outside of English), this may happen in covert terms. Main categories used for this purpose are modal adverbials ("modal particles") and modal verbs. Epistemic uses of modal verbs (like German sollen) cover evidential (reportative) information simultaneously providing the source of the information. Methodologically, description and explanation rest on Karl Bühler's concept of Origo as well as Roman Jakobson's concept of shifter. Typologically, East Asian languages such as Japanese pursue these semasiological fundaments far more closely than the European languages. In particular, Japanese has to mark the source of a statement in the declarative mode such that the reliability may be assessed by the hearer. The contributions in this collection provide insight into these modal techniques.

Modes of Modality

Modes of Modality PDF Author: Elisabeth Leiss
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027270791
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 519

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Book Description
The volume aims at a universal definition of modality or “illocutionary/speaker’s perspective force” that is strong enough to capture the entire range of different subtypes and varieties of modalities in different languages. The central idea is that modality is all-pervasive in language. This perspective on modality allows for the integration of covert modality as well as peripheral instances of modality in neglected domains such as the modality of insufficieny, of attitudinality, or neglected domains such as modality and illocutionary force in finite vs. nonfinite and factive vs. non-factive subordinated clauses. In most languages, modality encompasses modal verbs both in their root and epistemic meanings, at least where these languages have the principled distribution between root and epistemic modality in the first place (which is one fundamentally restricted, in its strict qualitative and quantitative sense, to the Germanic languages). In addition, this volume discusses one other intricate and partially highly mysterious class of modality triggers: modal particles as they are sported in the Germanic languages (except for English). It is argued in the contributions and the languages discussed in this volume how modal verbs and adverbials, next to modal particles, are expressed, how they are interlinked with contextual factors such as aspect, definiteness, person, verbal factivity, and assertivity as opposed to other attitudinal types. An essential concept used and argued for is perspectivization (a sub-concept of possible world semantics). Language groups covered in detail and compared are Slavic, Germanic, and South East Asian. The volume will interest researchers in theoretical and applied linguistics, typology, the semantics/pragmatics interface, and language philosophy as it is part of a larger project developing an alternative approach to Universal Grammar that is compatible with functionalist approaches.

Pragmatic Markers, Discourse Markers and Modal Particles

Pragmatic Markers, Discourse Markers and Modal Particles PDF Author: Chiara Fedriani
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027265496
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 504

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Book Description
This book offers new perspectives into the description of the form, meaning and function of Pragmatic Markers, Discourse Markers and Modal Particles in a number of different languages, along with new methods for identifying their ‘prototypical’ instances in situated language contexts, often based on cross-linguistic comparisons. The papers collected in this volume also discuss different factors at play in processes of grammaticalization and pragmaticalization, which include contact-induced change and pragmatic borrowing, socio-interactional functional pressures and sociopragmatic indexicalities, constraints of cognitive processing, together with regularities in semantic change. Putting the traditional issues concerning the status, delimitation and categorization of Pragmatic Markers, Discourse Markers and Modal Particles somewhat off the stage, the eighteen articles collected in this volume deal instead with general questions concerning the development and use of such procedural elements, explored from different approaches, both formal and functional, and from a variety of perspectives – including corpus-based, sociolinguistic, and contrastive perspectives – and offering language-specific synchronic and diachronic studies.

Modality in Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics

Modality in Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics PDF Author: Werner Abraham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108861083
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 455

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Book Description
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.

Covert Patterns of Modality

Covert Patterns of Modality PDF Author: Werner Abraham
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443842915
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
This typological overview compares the degree to which different languages have means to give expression to modality (possibility, necessity) without lexical and direct inflectional means. The criterial patterns derive from a variety of languages such as German, English, Chinese, French, Scandinavian, Italian, Romanian, Russian, Polish, and Gothic as well as Old High German. They encompass mainly the auxiliaries HAVE and BE, together with either an infinitival embedding of a full verb linked by the infinitival preposition TO, or other aspectual means. It is demonstrated that what appears as typical covert modal expressions in the Germanic languages, and the Indo-European ones in a wider sense, cannot be seen as a recurrent pattern in non-Indo-European languages. Yet, there are recurrent and plausible forms that allow for generalizations.

Spanish as a second and third language

Spanish as a second and third language PDF Author: Jonas Grünke
Publisher: Frank & Timme GmbH
ISBN: 3732909697
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
Spoken as a foreign language by around 24 million people worldwide, Spanish can be the second language (L2) of monolingually raised learners who acquire it in school. Ever more often it is also the third or a further language (L3) of learners who have previously studied another foreign language (for example Spanish after English in Germany) or who acquired more than one language during early childhood, as is the case with heritage speakers. This book explores the intersections between linguistics and language pedagogy related to the acquisition of L2 and L3 Spanish in various contexts worldwide. Fostering the interdisciplinary dialogue, it combines contributions by linguists and specialists in didactics, which not only examine the interface between basic linguistic and applied research but also develop proposals and materials for concrete teaching situations.

Certainty-uncertainty – and the Attitudinal Space in Between

Certainty-uncertainty – and the Attitudinal Space in Between PDF Author: Sibilla Cantarini
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027269149
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
The selected papers of this volume cover five main topics, namely ‘Certainty: The conceptual differential’; ‘(Un)Certainty as attitudinality’; ‘Dialogical exchange and speech acts’; ‘Onomasiology’; and ‘Applications in exegesis and religious discourse’. By examining the general theme of the communication of certainty and uncertainty from different scientific fields, theoretical approaches and perspectives, this compendium of state-of-the-art research papers provides both an interdisciplinary comparison of the latest investigations, methods and findings, and new advances and theoretical insights with a common focus on human communication.

The Oxford Handbook of Modality and Mood

The Oxford Handbook of Modality and Mood PDF Author: Jan Nuyts
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191646334
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 689

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Book Description
This handbook offers an in depth and comprehensive state of the art survey of the linguistic domains of modality and mood. An international team of experts in the field examine the full range of methodological and theoretical approaches to the many facets of the phenomena involved. Following an opening section that provides an introduction and historical background to the topic, the volume is divided into five parts. Parts 1 and 2 present the basic linguistic facts about the systems of modality and mood in the languages of the world, covering the semantics and the expression of different subtypes of modality and mood respectively. The authors also examine the interaction of modality and mood, mutually and with other semantic categories such as aspect, time, negation, and evidentiality. In Part 3, authors discuss the features of the modality and mood systems in five typologically different language groups, while chapters in Part 4 deal with wider perspectives on modality and mood: diachrony, areality, first language acquisition, and sign language. Finally, Part 5 looks at how modality and mood are handled in different theoretical approaches: formal syntax, functional linguistics, cognitive linguistics and construction grammar, and formal semantics.

Information-Structural Perspectives on Discourse Particles

Information-Structural Perspectives on Discourse Particles PDF Author: Pierre-Yves Modicom
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027261466
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
The articles collected in this volume offer new perspectives into the relevance of notions such as topic, antitopic, contrastive topic, focus, verum focus and theticity for the analysis of the syntax and semantics of modal particles, sentence-final particles and other medial, sentential and illocutive particles. This book addresses three great questions in a variety of languages ranging from Japanese to Mohawk, including Basque, French, German, Italian, Kazakh, Spanish and Turkish, with some insights from English and Russian. The first question is the role played by information-structural strategies such as left dislocations, clefts or the morphological marking of focus in the rise of discourse particles. In the second part, papers are concerned with the relevance of information structure for the study of polysemic and polyfunctional discourse particles. Finally, the contribution of particles to the determination of the information-structural profile of the clause is examined, as well as their role in the information-structural specification of illocutionary types. Language-specific papers alternate with comparative approaches in order to show how newer insights on information structure can help resolve some of the classical issues of the linguistic research on particles.

Distance in Language

Distance in Language PDF Author: Anastasia Meermann
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443878847
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
The conceptual metaphor of ""distance"" plays a crucial role in current perceptions of the world and humans' various interactions within it. It hardly seems possible to conceptualize space and time, emotional involvement in events, and relationships with other people in terms other than ""distance"". As a consequence, this primarily spatial concept figures prominently in the verbal expression of these abstract notions, and is thus highly relevant for the analysis of linguistic phenomena. In recen ...