`Approaches to Discourse Particles' is a collection of articles from all kinds of research perspectives. The volume aims at showing which approaches to discourse particles are on the market and how they answer those questions that constitute the most pressing problems in the semantic/pragmatic description of discourse particles in a way so that the different methods, assumptions, and perspectives of each approach can be compared. By providing an overview of many different comprehensive approaches to discourse particles, the book will constitute a necessary guidance and reference for all those many scholars working on particles.
In order to ensure the comparability (the major strength of the volume) of the approaches, all articles are being composed according to a given schema. The schema corresponds to the main problem areas for which an account of the meanings and functions of discourse particles has to provide solutions. My suggestion is that the central questions that need to be answered by every comprehensive approach to discourse particles are the following:
Providing a definition of discourse particles by describing the characteristics of the word class, and by developing criteria for deciding for every given particle instance whether it is a discourse particle;
accounting for the different interpretations of the items of the class, that is, for the functional spectrum of discourse particles;
accounting for the relationship between the different readings and the relationship between the readings and the particle lexeme. Just listing the different interpretations treats the items under consideration as homonymous; such an approach does not account for our intuition of the relatedness of these meanings, and it leaves unexplained how the interpretations observable are learnable and how contextual occurrences are interpretable;
relating the study of discourse particles to other questions of general linguistic interest (for instance, research in grammar, lexical semantics, or semiotics), such as the semantics/pragmatics interface, the nature and levels of discourse, or communicative functions. General linguistic distinctions should be mirrored in the architecture of the model, so that particles may finally lose their exceptional status.
These four problem areas constitute the schema on the basis of which the articles will be organized and which will constitute the common focus of the different approaches.
Table of Contents
Fischer, Kerstin: Towards an Understanding of the Spectrum of Approaches to Discourse Particles: Introduction to the Volume (41 pages)
A. Polysemy-based Approaches
Mosegaard Hansen, Maj-Britt: A Dynamic-Polysemy Approach to the Lexical Semantics of Discourse Markers (with an Exemplary Analysis of French toujours) (52 pages)
Lewis, Diana: Discourse Markers: A Discourse-Pragmatic View (39 pages)
Waltereit, Richard: The Rise of Discourse Markers in Italian: A Specific Type of Language Change (35 pages)
Pons Bordería, Salvador: A Functional Approach for the Study of Discourse Markers (47 pages)
Aijmer, Foolen & Simon-Vandenbergen: Discourse Particles in the Perspective of Heteroglossia (33 pages)
Roulet, Eddy: The Description of Text Relation Markers in the Geneva Model of Discourse Organization (34 pages)
Zeevat, Henk: A Dynamic Approach to Discourse Particles (35 pages)
B. Monosemy-based Approaches
Ler Soon Lay, Vivien: A Relevance Theoretic Approach to the Discourse Particles in Singapore English (41 pages)
Nyan, Thanh: From Procedural Meaning to Processing Requirement (45 pages)
Fraser, Bruce: A Theory of Discourse Markers (33 pages)
Weydt, Harald: What are Particles Good for? (27 pages)
Travis, Catherine: The Natural Semantic Metalanguage Approach to Discourse Markers (46 pages)
Gupta, Anthea F.: Epistemic Modalities and the Discourse Particles of Singapore (41pages)
Yang, Li-chiung: Integrating Prosodic and Contextual Cues in the Interpretation of Discourse Markers (47 pages)
Rossari, Corinne: Formal Properties of a Subset of Discourse Markers: Connectives (36 pages)
Schiffrin, Deborah: Discourse Marker Research and Theory: Revisiting and (65 pages)
Redeker, Gisela: Discourse Markers as Attentional Cues at Discourse Transitions (48 pages)
Frank-Job, Barbara: A Diachronic-Functional Approach to Discourse Markers (34 pages)
Nemo, François: Discourse Particles as Morphemes and as Constructions (67 pages)
Diewald, Gabriele: Discourse Particles and Modal Particles as Grammatical Elements (47 pages)
Fischer, Kerstin: Frames, Constructions, and Morphemic Meanings: The Functional Polysemy of Discourse Particles (49 pages)
Bazzanella, Carla: Discourse Markers in Italian: Towards a `Compositional' Meaning (45 pages)
Link for Authors
Back to Kerstin Fischer's home page