DS-2017-03: Westera, Matthijs (2017) Exhaustivity and intonation: a unified theory. Doctoral thesis, University of Amsterdam.
![[thumbnail of Full Text]](https://eprints.illc.uva.nl/style/images/fileicons/text.png) |
Text (Full Text)
DS-2017-03.text.pdf Download (2MB) |
Abstract
This dissertation presents a precise, unified and explanatory theory of human conversation, centered on two broad phenomena: exhaustivity implications and intonational meaning. In a nutshell: (i) speakers have two types of communicative intentions, namely information sharing and attention sharing, (ii) these types of intentions ideally comply with a certain set of rationality criteria, or maxims, (iii) speakers of English and related languages use intonation, in particular so-called trailing tones and boundary tones, to indicate whether such compliance is achieved, and (iv) exhaustivity implications arise when this holds, at least, for the attention-sharing intention.
The research presented here goes against a number of widespread assumptions in the field. The result is a perspective on conversation that enables new solutions to a broad range of well-known puzzles surrounding exhaustivity and intonation. Among these are the “symmetry problem”, the “epistemic step” without a competence assumption, the role of informationally redundant disjuncts, the bias expressed by rising declaratives, the range of uses of rise-fall-rise intonation, the effects of different intonation contours in lists, and differences between questions with rising and falling intonation.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Report Nr: | DS-2017-03 |
| Series Name: | ILLC Dissertation (DS) Series |
| Year: | 2017 |
| Subjects: | Language |
| Depositing User: | Dr Marco Vervoort |
| Date Deposited: | 14 Jun 2022 15:17 |
| Last Modified: | 14 Jun 2022 15:17 |
| URI: | https://eprints.illc.uva.nl/id/eprint/2143 |
Actions (login required)
 |
View Item |
