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The principal claim of this dissertation is that there is a unique structural core shared by Double Object, Dative Experiencer and Existential/Presentational constructions. This core is argued to take the form of a Cipient Predication structure, `cipient covering traditional notions like (affected) source/goal, recipient, indirect object or dative experiencer. Central questions arising in defining Cipient Predication are: How are cipients thematically licensed, and what is the role of there in argument-structural terms? What is the structural locus of cipients/there? What is the role and nature of dative case? How can the possessive interpretation, the blocking and definiteness effects associated with the above-mentioned constructions be explained? Cipients are presented as external arguments and logical subjects (location individuals) of predicates derived from a propositional meaning embedded in the VP, the predicate formed by a lower tense head `little t that is overtly realized as there. Little t is argued to encode a distinction at the reference time level, structural dative hinging on a tense property like structural nominative. The cipient relates as a whole to a part to a VP-internal location argument that together with the theme furnishes the propositional meaning (`possession ). As logical subjects, cipients anchor the predicate to the utterance context, forcing its interpretation in extralinguistic terms (`blocking effects ). It is proposed that lacking structurally encoded subjects, Existential/Presentational constructions are not saturated expressions in syntax, precluding the interpretation of certain quantifiers (most/every, vide `definiteness effects ). Cipient Predication, couched in terms of the Minimalist Program (in particular, Chomsky 1999) and a semantics relying on tense and the ontological distinction of locations as well as scalar and part-whole structure, should be of interest to scholars working on datives, argument structure, and the syntax/semantics/pragmatics interface more generally.
Understanding the design of talk-in-interaction is important in many domains, including speech technology. Although phonetic, linguistic and gestural correlates have been identified for some of the social actions that conversational participants accomplish, it is only recently that researchers have begun to take account of the immediately prior interactional context as an important factor influencing the design of a speaker’s turn. The present study explores the influence of context by focussing on characteristics of short turns produced by one speaker between turns from another speaker. The hypothesis is that the speaker designs her inserted turn as a match to the prior turn when wishing to align with the previous speaker’s agenda. By contrast, non-matching would display that the speaker is non-aligning, preferring instead to initiate a new action for example. Data are taken from the AMI corpus, focussing on the spontaneous talk of first-language English participants. Using sequential analysis, such short turns are classified as either aligning or non-aligning in accordance with definitions in the Conversation Analysis literature. The degree of prosodic similarity between the inserted turn and the prior speaker’s turn is measured using novel acoustic techniques. The results show that aligning turns are significantly more similar to the immediately preceding turn, in terms of pitch contour, than non-aligning turns. In contrast to the prosodic-acoustic analysis, the results of the gestural analysis indicate that aligning and non-aligning are differentiated by the use of distinct gestures, rather than by the matching (or non-matching) of gestures across the adjacent turns. These results support the view that choice of pitch contour is managed locally, rather than by reference to an intonational lexicon. However, this is not the case for speakers’ use of gesture. The implications of these findings for a model of talk-in-interaction are considered, along with potential applications.