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This paper explores what I call Dissociative Syntactic Amalgam (DSA) constructions, observed in conversation parts of fictional varieties of English, such as film/TV scripts and novels. I provide 27 cases of DSAs, most of which come from Corpus of Contemporary American English and Movie Corpus. A paradigm example is I get off at ten past I'm never going out with you (as an answer to What time do you get off (work) tonight?), where I'm never going out with you is clausal but fills a nominal slot. In DSAs, the speaker initially lures the hearer to create a positive expectation (e.g., I can go out with her), but the speaker 'dissociates' herself from this expectation, that is, expresses her negative attitude (e.g., irritation) towards it. DSAs have received little (if any) analytic attention, and this paper aims to fill this gap in the literature. More specifically, I describe interpretive aspects of DSAs in comparison with the standard cases of syntactic amalgams (e.g., Ken sent you'll never guess how many letters to Naomi) and develop a cognitive–pragmatic account in relevance theory, explicating the interpretive path a hearer takes in comprehending a DSA utterance. • Identifying the Dissociative Syntactic Amalgam (DSA) construction. • Considering the ways in which a speaker conveys a variety of emotive meanings. • Presenting a theory-neutral description of interpretive aspects of DSAs. • Developing a cognitive–pragmatic account of DSAs in relevance theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The upper ranks of corpus word frequency lists are primarily populated by functional items, as well as by other small words characterised by their polysemy that reward focussed attention and research. Exploring these items has resulted in rich and fruitful insights from a corpus pragmatic perspective. This paper focuses on the nature and value of there as a discourse-pragmatic marker in Irish English (IrE). We focus on intimate discourse (i.e., the language used between family and friends), and use corpora of IrE to trace and investigate the varietal nuances of there in this context. Our analysis acknowledges the expected existential and locative functions and illustrates that there has specific discourse–pragmatic properties in the intimate sphere in IrE. We argue that there has acquired additional pragmatic dimensions and is used in the language of family and friends as, for example, an involvement marker or mitigator. In the discussion of the development of there as a discourse-pragmatic marker, we consult historical data that matches our focal context, and discuss the processes by which there has come to fulfil a range of discourse-pragmatic functions in IrE. • Presents the first focussed study of discourse-pragmatic there in contemporary Irish English. • Takes a corpus pragmatic form-to-function approach, moving from raw frequency to detailed discussion of use in context. • Demonstrates a high level of functional variation for there in a contemporary Irish English corpus. • Patterns of DPM there include its use with various time-stamps, as a mitigator and in certain conversational contexts. • There provides a shortcut to a notional, imagined shared space creating an accelerated involvement in interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A long tradition of research in theoretical, experimental and computational pragmatics has investigated over-specification and under-specification in referring expressions. Along broadly Gricean lines, these studies compare the amount of information expressed by a referring expression against the amount of information that is required. Often, however, these studies offer no formal definition of what "required" means, and how the comparison should be performed. In this paper, we use a simple set-theoretic perspective to define some communicatively important types of over-/under-specification. We argue that our perspective enables an enhanced understanding of reference phenomena that can pay important dividends for the analysis of reference in corpora and for the evaluation of computational models of referring. To illustrate and substantiate our claims, we analyse two corpora, containing Chinese and English referring expressions respectively, using the new perspective. The results show that interesting new monolingual and cross-linguistic insights can be obtained from our perspective. • A new prospective on reference is proposed; • Referring Expressions are sub-categorised; • An annotation scheme is proposed based on the new perspective; • Using the scheme, a enhanced analysis is conducted on two reference corpora (in English and Chinese, respectively). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research on pragmatic overlap and change suggests that in cases in which two linguistic items evolve one after the other to express similar functions, the new form may substitute the older one, the older expression may further evolve, thereby differentiating from the newer item, or the two forms may become more alike. In this paper, we present a case attesting to a different process. In this type of path, it is the newer form that further evolves, thus "outpassing" the older expression in the subjective-intersubjective cline. The case in point is the consecutive development of the Hebrew phrases yeʃ/en sikuy/matsav ('there is/isn't a chance/situation'). In Present-Day Hebrew, these pairs express similar subjective-modal functions referring to possibilities, yet only the relatively new pair, yeʃ/en matsav , also functions as a conventionalized intersubjective marker. We here provide a descriptive account of their development in the cline and the factors involved in the further evolution of yeʃ/en matsav. Our findings suggest that yeʃ/en matsav pragmatically outpassed their counterparts due to a semantic advantage relating to the persistence of a circumstantial meaning. Overall, this research illuminates an understudied type of development, pointing to the multifaceted nature of pragmatic change. • An examination of consecutive change and overlap of Hebrew intersubjective markers. • Corpus data reveal the new expression has further evolved pragmatically. • Findings suggest new items may outpass older ones due to semantic advantages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a 20-hour contrastive corpus documenting political debates (public debates as well as debates on TV) and work meetings, the paper examines the functions and distributions of a specific French evidential: tu dis/vous dites [P] [you say [P]] (n = 108). Reported speech markers have been studied extensively across various languages and communicative contexts. However, the situation where speakers report their addressee's speech remains relatively unexplored. Although the verb dire [say] is semantically neutral in terms of polarity (i.e. it does not express either agreement or disagreement with the reported content [P]), analysis of the corpus shows that expectations related to discourse genres play a crucial role in terms of pragmatic enrichment: depending on the genre and role of the speaker, tu dis/vous dites [P] [you say [P]] frequently works as a stance-taking marker that is either oriented towards agreement or disagreement regarding [P]. In work meetings, besides the neutral tokens used for intersubjective objectives (e.g. repair sequences), tokens are massively oriented towards agreement. In political debates, and especially TV debates, the marker is either used by the moderator to frame the disagreement, or by debaters to disagree with each other. • Semantically, tu dis/vous dites [P] [you say [P]] is neutral regarding [P]. • Quantitative and qualitative analysis is performed on a 20h contrastive corpus. • Three speech genres are contrasted: public debates, TV debates, work meetings. • Analysis shows that the marker is context-sensitive regarding the stance towards [P]. • Orientation towards agreement and disagreement depends on genre norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their criticisms of traditional theories of politeness, Watts et al. (2005 [1992]) and Eelen (2001) call for first-order approaches to (im)politeness. While their 'discursive approach' has faced its own criticisms, one useful strand which has emerged from this research is a focus on how (im)politeness is evaluated and discussed. However, compared to other approaches to (im)politeness, such language has received little attention. Studies on (im)politeness metalanguage also often preselect lexical items for analysis, for instance 'polite', 'rude', and 'courtesy'. Likewise, there is still a near vacuum in historical and stylistic aspects of (im)politeness metalanguage. This paper broadly contributes to (im)politeness (meta)pragmatics by establishing a method for inductively locating (im)politeness metalinguistic items in a corpus, specifically employing a corpus of Shakespeare's plays, and in doing so locates a total of 234 (im)politeness metalinguistic forms with a collective total of 4,023 instances in a corpus of 1 million words. This study then identifies semantic patterns in how these terms are used by arranging them into five second-order categories, reflecting on previous (im)politeness literature. Finally, the study briefly considers the potential that this approach has for (im)politeness research, as well as this data in particular for stylistic and historical interests in (im)politeness. • Hundreds of different lexical items can and are used to evaluate (im)politeness. • (Im)politeness metalanguage can be discovered and explored using corpora. • Semantic analysis and categorisation of (im)politeness metalanguage in Shakespeare's plays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper studies the functions of negated indicative present forms of the verb vedere 'to see' that refer to the speaker and are followed by an indirect wh-interrogative subordinate clause. The investigation of an Italian written corpus of newspaper articles, reviews and forum posts shows that this construction set forms a discourse routine with a recurrent pragmatic function. It expresses a disagreeing action of rebuttal that includes the reformulation and critical assessment of an interlocutor's preceding utterance and projects arguments sustaining the speaker's standpoint. The routine is highly specialized: its functions are limited to those mentioned, whereas it does not express bare denial, counterarguments, or agreeing actions. The corpus analysis also shows that this specialization is a characteristic of the combination of the examined negated verb forms with indirect wh-interrogative clauses, whereas combinations with other complement types either do not occur at all in the corpus (indirect polar questions and complement clauses introduced by che) or have a broader range of diverse discourse functions (nominal complements with propositional meaning). The routine's lexical and grammatical components (inferential lexical meaning, deixis, negation and its scope, the presupposing properties of indirect wh-interrogatives, mood) all contribute to realize its discourse function. • Negated vedere + indirect wh-interrogative has evidential meaning and marks a disagreeing action. • The construction tends to express a rebuttal justified by explicit arguments given in the co-text. • Its function depends on lexical meaning, deixis, negation, presupposition, and mood. • The indirect wh-interrogative establishes a discourse relation with a preceding statement. • The combination of evidential verbs with negation raises specific problems of scope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite questions having a long-standing history in theoretical linguistics, the interface between empirically grounded corpus linguistics of questioning behaviour and analytically driven pragmatic theory of question structure and context has received significantly less attention. This paper aims to contribute to this field of research by showing that a four-way categorisation into question types, namely, pure questioning, assertive questioning, rhetorical questioning and challenge questioning, allows us to capture and represent questions in over two million words in natural language argumentative dialogue. In this type of dialogue questioning has been claimed to serve as the engine that drives the shape and development of a discourse. Our investigation covers three genres of argumentative discourse in which questions play a key role, namely political debates, moral dilemmas and sessions of participatory deliberative democracy. Through deep algorithmic analysis of the data, we test a variety of hypotheses from argumentation and linguistic theory, clearly demonstrating for the first time that (particular types of) questions directly catalyse argument structure and that the illocutionary consequences of non-canonical questions are much more varied than previously thought. • Empirical pragmatic study of questions. • Natural language argumentation. • Pure, information-seeking questions. • Rhetorical questions. • Assertive questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a definition of mitigation based on three interconnected dimensions: cognitive, rhetorical/social, and linguistic. According to the definition provided, some specific requirements from all three dimensions must be met for a linguistic expression to be considered an instance of pragmatic mitigation (self-image protection, communicative effectiveness and some specific semantic-pragmatic characteristics mainly related with Levinson's (2000) M-heuristics, respectively). The definition builds on previous contributions and considers important descriptive problems, such as the heterogeneity of the linguistic mechanisms used to express mitigation and the partiality or incompleteness of some definitions, which consider mitigation from a single perspective and are therefore only valid for specific contexts, genres or varieties. • An integrated and operative definition of pragmatic mitigation has been provided. • Three dimensions are addressed: cognitive, socio-rhetorical and linguistic. • The proposal deals with the problems of the recognition of mitigation in corpora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]