[PLing] Einladung Vortrag Sarah Zobel, 17.3.2015

[Viola Schmitt]

Liebe Kolleginnen & Kollegen,

wir möchten Sie ganz herzlich zu einem Vortrag von

Sarah Zobel (Universität Tübingen)

mit dem Titel

"On the distribution of German discourse particles across types of questions"

einladen.

Der Vortrag findet am Dienstag, den 17.3.2015, um 15.30 im Medienlabor,
Sensengasse 3A statt. Das Abstract finden Sie im unteren Teil dieser
Nachricht.

Herzliche Grüße,

Viola Schmitt (auch im Namen von Katharina Hartmann und Jakob Steixner)







Sarah Zobel (University of Tübingen)

On the distribution of German discourse particles across types of questions
(joint work with Eva Csipak [University of Göttingen])

The central puzzle that we set out to investigate is the distribution of
four German discourse particles across different types of questions:
German "leicht", "eh", "etwa" and "denn" (where "denn" and "etwa" are
considered in their German German usage, and "leicht" and "eh" in their
Austrian German variant). Of these four particles, notably only "denn" and
"leicht" can occur in constituent questions, while all four are possible
in polarity questions. Compare (1) and (2).

(1) a. Was hast du denn gefunden?
    b. Was hast du leicht gefunden?
    c. *Was hast du etwa gefunden?
    d. *Was hast du eh gefunden? (* in its intended interpretation)
       ‘What did you find?’

(2) a. Hast du denn die Seife gefunden?
    b. Hast du leicht die Seife gefunden?
    c. Hast du etwa die Seife gefunden?
    d. Hast du eh die Seife gefunden?
       ‘Did you find the soap?’

The aim of this talk is to present a semi-formal analysis of the semantic
and pragmatic contribution of the four particles that derives their
distribution across question types in terms of their pragmatic
function/not-at-issue content: The not-at-issue content contributed by all
four particles is compatible with the content contributed by the sentence
radical of polarity questions. The not-at-issue content contributed by
"etwa" and "eh", however, clashes with the content contributed by the
sentence radical of constituent questions, which results in
ungrammaticality.