Search

The paper contributes to the ongoing discussion on the relation between information structure and discourse structure. It presents an account of the German conjunct adverb doch (dochCA) that is based on the observation that the interaction between the two structures determines the semantic and pragmatic properties of this conjunct adverb. The account of dochCA presented thus defends a monosemic view on which the semantic and pragmatic properties of this particular use of the German discourse particle doch can be derived from the properties of the context in which the word occurs. I argue in particular that dochCA acquires its anaphoric and concessive properties due to the following interaction between discourse structure and information structure: (i) accent on dochCA evokes as a focus alternative the proposition expressed by the negated counterpart of the dochCA-host, and (ii) prosodically induced contrast together with a mechanism I tentatively call discourse-linking lead to establishing an implicational anaphoric link of the dochCA-host to the first conjunct in a dochCA-conjunction. The analysis of dochCA is argued to account for the relation between dochCA and other uses of the word, such as the conjunction doch and the adverbial middle-field doch. It also suggests an alternative account of cases of Roothean contrast (Rooth, Natural language semantics 1: 75116, 1992) involving implicit antecedents of contrastive focus alternatives, as well as a general model of the mechanics of the concessive interpretation of contrastive conjunctions such as aber and but. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents an analysis of the meaning and discourse effects of the German discourse particle nämlich that unifies its different readings and explains its distributional properties. I suggest that nämlich is most adequately analysed in terms of it indicating a specificational relation between its host and the preceding sentence, which in a question-based framework can be implemented as indicating an answer to a "specifying question", a discourse question requiring an answer that provides a more detailed description of some aspect of the preceding utterance. The analysis represents a refinement and extension of the question-based analysis of nämlich developed in Onea and Volodina (2009) where nämlich is analysed in terms of indicating that its host is a short answer to an implicit constituent question or a Why-discourse question. The approach I provide suggests solutions to several puzzles related to the distributional properties of nämlich. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]