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The question of form in the forming of questions: The meaning and use of clefted wh-interrogatives in Swedish
Journal of Linguistics ( IF 1.381 ) Pub Date : 2019-01-30 , DOI: 10.1017/s0022226718000634
JOHAN BRANDTLER

This paper addresses the meaning and use of clefted wh-interrogatives (I-clefts) in Swedish. It is shown that I-clefts always relate immediately to the topic under discussion and serve to clarify a matter in relation to this topic. They are never used in out-of-the-blue contexts. I argue that I-clefts have the same information structure as typically assumed for declarative clefts: the clefted clause expresses an existential presupposition and the cleft phrase is the identificational focus of the utterance. I further argue that the implication of existence commonly associated with canonical argument questions is weaker (a conversational implicature) than the existential presupposition associated with clefts. The results from an extensive corpus survey show that argument I-clefts (who, what) constitute no less than 98% of the total number of I-clefts in my material. This frequency is linked to the presuppositional status of the cleft construction: in contexts where the denoted event is presupposed as part of the common ground, the clefted variety is the more effective choice, due to its clear partitioning of focus and ground. The ‘cost’ of using a more complex syntactic structure (the cleft) is thus counterbalanced by the benefit of being able to pose a question adjusted to the contextual requirements. As non-argument questions are typically presuppositional irrespective of syntactic form, the gain of using a cleft is less obvious – hence their infrequency in the material.

中文翻译:

问题形成中的形式问题:瑞典语中分裂 wh 疑问句的意义和使用

本文阐述了 clefted 的含义和使用什么-瑞典语中的疑问句(I-clefts)。结果表明,I 裂总是与讨论的主题直接相关,并有助于澄清与该主题相关的问题。它们永远不会在突然出现的情况下使用。我认为 I-clefts 具有与陈述性 clefts 通常假设的信息结构相同的信息结构:clefted 从句表达了存在主义的预设,而 cleft 短语是话语的识别焦点。我进一步认为,存在的含义通常与典范论证问题比与裂隙相关的存在主义预设弱(会话含义)。一项广泛的语料库调查的结果表明,论点 I 分裂 (,什么) 占我材料中 I 裂缝总数的不少于 98%。这种频率与分裂结构的预设状态有关:在所指事件被预设为共同基础的一部分的情况下,分裂变体是更有效的选择,因为它清楚地划分了焦点和基础。因此,使用更复杂的句法结构(裂缝)的“成本”被能够提出根据上下文要求调整的问题的好处所抵消。由于非论证问题通常是预设的,与句法形式无关,使用裂隙的好处不太明显——因此它们在材料中的频率很低。
更新日期:2019-01-30
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