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Modal Particles, Discourse Structure and Common Ground Management

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Modal Particles, Discourse Structure and Common Ground Management Modal Particles, Discourse Structure and Common Ground Management. Theoretical and Empirical Aspects. Dissertation zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades Doktorin der Philosophie (Dr. phil.) eingereicht an der Sprach- und literaturwissenschaftlichen Fakult¨at der Humboldt-Universit¨atzu Berlin von M.A. Sophia D¨oring Disputation: 15. Juli 2016 Prof. Dr. Dr. Sabine Kunst Prof. Dr. Ulrike Vedder Pr¨asidentin Dekanin der Humboldt-Universit¨atzu Berlin der Sprach- und literaturwissenschaftlichen Fakult¨at Gutachterinnen und Gutachter: 1. Prof. Dr. Markus Egg 2. Prof. Dr. Manfred Krifka 3. Prof. Dr. Sophie Repp Contents Danksagung iii 1. Introduction 1 2. Perspectives on modal particles 5 2.1. Characteristics of modal particles ............... 5 2.2. Modal particles as modifiers of illocutionary operators .... 7 2.3. Modal particles for organizing common ground ........ 11 2.4. Modal particles as meta-pragmatic instructions ....... 15 2.5. Combining the perspectives: Karagjosova (2004) ....... 17 3. Common ground and commitments 23 3.1. Negotiating commitments I: Farkas & Bruce (2010) ..................... 24 3.2. Negotiating commitments II: Commitment space semantics . 27 3.3. Common ground with salience and meta-information .... 29 3.3.1. Propositions, assertions, and discourse commitments 32 3.3.2. The common ground .................. 34 3.3.3. Acceptance, confirmation, and rejection ........ 36 3.3.4. Salience ......................... 37 3.3.5. Meta-information on the table ............. 41 4. Common ground management with modal particles 45 4.1. ja and doch ........................... 45 4.1.1. Basic meaning ...................... 45 4.1.2. Effect on table and common ground .......... 50 4.2. halt and eben .......................... 56 4.2.1. Basic meaning ...................... 56 i Contents 4.2.2. Effect on table and common ground .......... 62 4.3. wohl and schon ......................... 68 4.3.1. Basic meaning ...................... 68 4.3.2. Effect on table and common ground .......... 74 4.4. Chapter summary ........................ 80 5. Discourse: More than a soup of sentences 83 5.1. Interaction between clause and discourse level ........ 83 5.2. What holds discourse together? ................ 84 5.2.1. Coherence ........................ 84 5.2.2. Cohesion ......................... 87 5.3. Discourse structure ....................... 90 5.3.1. Units, relations, and trees ............... 90 5.3.2. Discourse relation accounts ............... 97 5.3.2.1. Hobbs (1985): Four groups of relations . 99 5.3.2.2. Rhetorical Structure Theory ......... 103 5.3.2.3. Segmented Discourse Representation Theory 112 5.3.2.4. Kehler (2002): Relations among ideas . 118 5.4. Discourse structure and implicit questions .......... 123 6. A hierarchy for discourse relations 127 6.1. The classification of discourse relations: A laundry list . 127 6.1.1. Semantic vs. pragmatic relations ........... 130 6.1.2. Semantic effect ..................... 132 6.1.3. Further distinctions ................... 133 6.2. A new hierarchy of relations .................. 136 7. The Interaction of modal particles and discourse relations: predictions 139 8. Corpus study 143 8.1. Motivation for the corpus study ................ 143 8.2. Corpus choice and corpus annotation ............. 144 8.2.1. Choice of corpus .................... 144 8.2.2. Data annotation .................... 145 ii Contents 8.2.3. Data analysis ...................... 150 8.2.4. Predictions ....................... 155 8.3. ja and doch ........................... 156 8.3.1. Predictions ....................... 156 8.3.2. Results .......................... 156 8.3.3. Discussion ........................ 162 8.4. eben and halt .......................... 178 8.4.1. Predictions ....................... 178 8.4.2. Results .......................... 178 8.4.3. Discussion ........................ 183 8.5. wohl and schon ......................... 192 8.5.1. Predictions ....................... 192 8.5.2. Results .......................... 193 8.5.3. Discussion ........................ 197 9. Experimental evidence from a forced lexical choice task 207 9.1. Motivation ............................ 207 9.2. Method ............................. 208 9.3. Results .............................. 213 9.4. Discussion ............................ 216 10.Threefold implications 221 10.1. What is the modal particles’ effect on the interpretation of discourse? ............................ 222 10.2. How do different modal particles operate in discourse? . 226 10.2.1. Uncontroversial or evident: ja, doch, eben and halt . 226 10.2.2. Anticipate counter-arguments: schon ......... 228 10.2.3. Indicate low commitment: wohl ............ 229 10.2.4. Manipulation ...................... 229 10.3. Where do modal particles achieve their effect? ........ 233 10.3.1. Subject-matter and presentational relations ..... 233 10.3.2. Nucleus vs. satellite .................. 235 10.3.3. Restrictions for the occurrence of particles ...... 236 11.Conclusions 239 iii Contents A. Set of relations used for the corpus annotation 243 B. Experimental items 251 B.1. Target items ........................... 251 B.2. Filler items ........................... 257 C. Odds ratio and confidence intervals 265 Bibliography 265 iv Danksagung Ich m¨ochte mich herzlich bedanken bei Manfred Krifka f¨urdie hilfreichen Anregungen, Literaturhinweise und Diskussionen, die mir immer wieder wichtige neue Impulse gegeben haben, und bei Markus Egg f¨urseine Kom- mentare und die Anfertigung des Gutachtens. Ein ganz besonders Dank gilt Sophie Repp, die mit sehr viel Zeit und Geduld, unz¨ahligenGespr¨achen und Hinweisen ganz entscheidend f¨urmich bei der Fertigstellung dieser Dis- sertation war. Außerdem danke ich meinen Kollegen und Kolleginnen f¨urdie fachliche und moralische Unterst¨utzungund daf¨ur,dass ich durch sie in einem so angenehmen Umfeld arbeiten durfte und darf. Allen voran ist das Beate Bergmann, mit der ich lange Zeit das B¨uround ein Projekt, aber letz- tendlich viel mehr als das geteilt habe. Ich kann mir nicht vorstellen, wie diese Zeit ohne sie gewesen w¨are. Des weiteren gilt dieser Dank (in keiner bestimmten Reihenfolge): Nathalie Scherf, Marlijn Meier, Antonio Machi- cao y Priemer, Imke Driemel, Johannes Mursell, Thomas Krause, Paola Fritz Huechante und Julian Rott. Felix Golcher danke ich besonders f¨ur seine Hilfe bei der Statistik, so wie bei Carsten Schliewe, Xiaoyu Bai und Tobias Voy f¨urdie Unterst¨utzung bei der Durchf¨uhrungder experimentellen Studie. Schließlich geb¨uhrtzwei Personen ein ganz besonderer Dank: Zum einen Berry Claus – f¨urihre Unterst¨utzungund ihre Anregungen auf der fach- lichen Ebene, aber noch viel mehr f¨urihr Mut-Machen, ihre Ruhe, Zu- versicht und den geliehenen Gott. Zum anderen Hagen Hirschmann – f¨urzahlreiche Gespr¨ache ¨uber den Inhalt der Arbeit, Korrekturlesen und moralische Unterst¨utzung– am allermeisten aber daf¨ur,dass er niemals v Danksagung einen Zweifel daran hatte, dass ich es schaffen werde. Ich bedanke mich auch f¨urdie Finanzierung meiner Forschung durch die DFG in der Zeit von 2011 bis 2015, als ich im Sonderforschungsbereich 632 gearbeitet habe. Dar¨uber hinaus hatte ich das Gl¨uck, im Jahr 2015 f¨ur sechs Monate im Rahmen der Exzellenzinitative der Humboldt-Universit¨at zu Berlin das Caroline-von-Humboldt-Stipendium zu erhalten. Die vorliegende Arbeit ist eine ¨uberarbeitete Version der von mir im Jahr 2016 eingereichten Dissertation, die denselben Titel tr¨agt. vi 1. Introduction Few expressions of German have been discussed as extensively in the last decades as modal particles. Once reduced to filler words, the class of modal particles moved into the focus of syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic analyses as their meaning contribution is a challenge for all of these sub- disciplines. Modal particles do not add to the meaning of an utterance on the truth-functional level, instead their meaning is of expressive nature. By making reference to an attitude of the speaker, their meaning is context- dependent which makes it difficult to capture. The class of modal particles has been approached in different ways: Their meaning has been explained with respect to speech acts, felicity conditions, common ground, modifica- tion of sentence type or illocutionary operators, and descriptive accounts collected different uses in different environments. In this book, I will look at German modal particles from the perspective of discourse structure. For- mer approaches almost exclusively analyzed the meaning of particles within the sentence boundaries. I will show that it is worthwhile to take a broader perspective and to consider not only a modal particle’s effect within the sentence it occurs with, but also what function is has with respect to the discourse structure that is currently built up. I conduct two quantitative studies, a corpus study and a forced lexical choice experiment, thus it is also methodologically a new approach. These quan- titative studies offer important new insights. In the corpus study, I analyze the occurrence of six German modal particles in parliament speeches with respect to their interaction with discourse relations, using the framework of Rhetorical Structure Theory (Mann & Thompson 1988). The subsequent experiment serves to gain additional evidence for the observations from the corpus study. This discourse perspective on modal particles offers insights into the func- 1 1. Introduction tion of modal particles which cannot be gained by purely word- or sentence- semantic analyses. I will show that the use
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