DS-2017-03: Exhaustivity and intonation: a unified theory

DS-2017-03: Westera, Matthijs (2017) Exhaustivity and intonation: a unified theory. Doctoral thesis, University of Amsterdam.

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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

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