Abstract
AbstractThis chapter investigates the discourse status of parenthetical meaning. It starts with the well-known observation that there is a robust intuition that a (declarative) utterance carries a “main point”, or more technically, that some part of its content is “at-issue” in the given context. The intuition of at-issueness has been construed as based on what question participants are currently trying to answer (adopted here), which proposition it is proposed be added to the common ground, or what part of the existing discourse is still open for attachment by an upcoming segment. While parenthetical content is typically not at-issue, there are cases in which it does contribute to answering the question under discussion. Such cases suggest that the usual not-at-issue status of parentheticals is conversationally derived and not conventionally marked.
Publisher
Oxford University PressOxford
Reference286 articles.
1. Presupposition cancellation: Explaining the ‘soft-hard’ trigger distinction.;Natural Language Semantics,2016
2. Aloni, M., D. Beaver, B. Clark, and R. van Rooij (2007). The dynamics of topic and focus. In M. Aloni, A. Butler, and P. Dekker (eds), Questions in Dynamic Semantics, pp. 123–46. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
3. Amaral, P., C. Roberts, and E. A. Smith (2007). Review of The Logic of Conventional Implicatures by Chris Potts. Linguistics and Philosophy 30, 707–49.
4. Anand, P. and A. Nevins (2004). Shifty operators in changing contexts. In Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory 14, pp. 20–37.