Levels of Linguistic Adaptation: Selected Papers from the International Pragmatics Conference, Antwerp, August 1987. Volume 2: Levels of Linguistic Adaptation

347 Pages·1991·28.94 MB·English

by  Jef Verschueren (ed.)

LEVELS OF LINGUISTIC ADAPTATION
Pragmatics & Beyond
New Series
Editors:
Jacob L. Mey
(Odense University)
Herman Parret
(Belgian National Science Foundation, Universities of Louvain and Antwerp)
Jef Verschueren
(Belgian National Science Foundation, University of Antwerp)
Editorial Address:
Linguistics (GER)
University of Antwerp (UIA)
Universiteitsplein 1
B-2610 Wilrijk
Belgium
Editorial Board:
Norbert Dittmar (Free University of Berlin)
Bruce Fraser (Boston University)
John Heritage (University of California at Los Angeles)
David Holdcroft (University of Leeds)
Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni (University of Lyon 2)
Beatriz Lavandera (University of Buenos Aires)
Marina Sbisà (University of Trieste)
Emanuel A. Schegloff (University of California at Los Angeles)
Paul O. Takahara (Kobe University)
Sandra Thompson (University of California at Santa Barbara)
Daniel Vanderveken (University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières)
Teun A. van Dijk (University of Amsterdam)
6:2
Jef Verschueren (ed.)
Levels of Linguistic Adaptation
LEVELS
OF
LINGUISTIC ADAPTATION
Selected papers of
the International Pragmatics Conference,
Antwerp, August 17-22, 1987
Volume II
edited by
JEF VERSCHUEREN
University of Antwerp
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
1991
PRAGMATICS & BEYOND NS 6
Vol. 1: Pragmatics at Issue, edited by Jef Verschueren
ISBN 90 272 5014 6 (Eur.)/l-55619-106-5 (US)
Vol. 2: Levels of Linguistic Adaptation, edited by Jef Verschueren
ISBN 90 272 5015 4 (Eur.)/l-55619-107-3 (US)
Vol. 3: The Pragmatics of Intercultural and International Communication,
edited by Jan Blommaert and Jef Verschueren
ISBN 90 272 5016 2 (Eur.)/1-55619-108-1 (US)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
International Pragmatics Conference (1987 : Antwerp, Belgium)
Levels of linguistic adaptation : selected papers of the International Pragmatics Con­
ference, Antwerp, August 17-22, 1987 / edited by Jef Verschueren.
p. cm. - (Pragmatics & beyond, ISSN 0922-842X ; new ser. 6:2)
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Pragmatics - Congresses. I. Verschueren, Jef. II. Title. III. Series.
P99.4.P72I58 1987
306.4'4--dc20 91-22067
ISBN 90 272 5015 4 (Eur.)/l-55619-107-3 (US) (v.2; alk. paper)
ISBN 90 272 5013 8 (Eur.)/l-55619-101-4 (US) (set; alk. paper) CIP
© Copyright 1991 - John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or
any other means, without written permission from the publisher.
Table of contents
Preface vii
On the contextualizing function of speech rhythm in conversation:
Question-answer sequences 1
Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen and Peter Auer
Explaining a missing modal meaning: Ideology and paradigm as
pragmatic parameter 19
Steven Cushing
Elements of morphopragmatics 33
Wolfgang U. Dressler and Lavinia Merlini Barbaresi
Switch reference anomalies and 'topic' in west greenlandic: A case of
pragmatics over syntax 53
Michael Fortescue
Intonational phrases and syntactic focus domains 81
Thorstein Fretheim
A pragmatic analysis of control in Chinese 113
Yan Huang
Empathy as motivation for style shifting in narrative 147
Jyrki Kalliokoski
Pragmatic constraints on ambiguous text 163
Joseph F. Kess and Ronald A. Hoppe
From syntax to pragmatics: Inalienable possession in Brazilian Por­
tuguese 173
Michael D. Kliffer
On reference and deixis 185
Barbara Kryk
Contradiction and paradox in discourse 195
Neal R. Norrick
V1 TABLE OF CONTENTS
On the language-internal interaction of prosody and pragmatic parti­
cles 203
Jan Ola Östman
Ethnolinguistic and interpretative concepts in explaining language
shift 223
Rosita Rindler Schjerve
Prolegomena to the pragmatics of "situational-intentional" varieties
in Kilivila language 235
Gunter Senft
The pragmatics of French newspaper headlines 249
Clyde Thogmartin
My mom and I are the best friends 267
Ruth Wodak and Muriel Schulz
References 295
Index of names 325
Index of subjects 331
Preface
During the 1987 International Pragmatics Conference (Antwerp,
August 17-22), literally hundreds of papers were presented which all belong
in a field of pragmatics widely defined as the cognitive and social science of
language and communication. These three volumes of proceedings (Prag­
matics at issue, Levels of linguistic adaptation, and The pragmatics of
intercultural and international communication) only provide a partial, though
largely representative, picture of the scholarly substance of the conference.
Since papers were considered individually for publication, the present
spin-off of the meetings does not bear a direct relationship to the thematic
sessions which were organized. Therefore, except for the third volume
which brings together papers from the special topic area (problems of
intercultural and international communication) with papers from the Ghent
Symposium on Intercultural Communication, these volumes of proceedings
are not thematic in a strict sense. Yet, the first two volumes form relatively
natural units. Pragmatics at issue collects those papers which focus mainly
on fundamental questions such as: the relation of pragmatics to grammar
and semantics, intentionality, communicative success, the status of literal
meaning, the nature of utterances in conversation, the notion of argumen­
tation, the acquisition of reference and conversational skills, the problem of
the computational processing of communication. Taking the view that
speaking consists of the adaptive making of choices, Levels of linguistic
adaptation provides a spectrum of different levels of linguistic structure at
which adaptation processes operate; the range represented here includes:
intonation patterns, morphemes, particles, modal auxiliaries, anaphoric
relations, reference and deixis, possessive constructions, topic construc­
tions, adjacency pairs, discourse and conversation, text, style, language
varieties, language.
These volumes could not have been produced without the practical
help of Ann Verhaert (for the first two) and Gerd De Keyser (for the
third). For the organization of the Ghent Symposium on Intercultural Com-
V111 PREFACE
munication, we should thank Prof. Dr. Marcel Van Spaandonck for his sup­
port as Dean of the Faculty of Letters. For the organization of the 1987
International Pragmatics Conference the following people and institutions
should be thanked: Alessandro Duranti and Jan Nuyts, co-organizers; the
Belgian national Fund for Scientific Research, for its financial support; the
University of Antwerp (UIA), for financial and logistic support, the John
Benjamins Publishing Company, and the many individuals who took care of
all the practical arrangements during the conference, whose names have not
been forgotten but whom we might not be able to list exhaustively.
On the contextualizing function of speech
rhythm in conversation:
Question-answer sequences
Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen and Peter Auer
Universität Konstanz
1. Background
The background for this preliminary report on the contextualizing
function of rhythm in conversation1 is Erickson/Shultz's The Counselor as
Gatekeeper (1982), in which the authors claim that conversationalists, in
particular counselors and their student advisees, synchronize their verbal
and non-verbal behaviour during interviews such that an over-all pattern of
rhythm is established and maintained through time. This rhythmic pattern,
they state, is constituted by the even spacing in time of the speaker's points
of emphasis in speech and in body motion, and is supported by kinesic and
verbal backchanneling activity on the part of the listener. Erickson/Schultz
are concerned to show that when this rhythmic framework breaks down or
even 'wobbles,' the result is an interactional 'incident,' or in their terminol­
ogy an uncomfortable moment with varying degrees of gravity. They point
to four types of rhythmic instability or 'arhythmia' and remark that the two
most serious kinds — mutual rhythmic interference and mutual rhythmic
opposition — are most frequently found when student and counselor come
from different ethnic backgrounds.
Our approach to rhythm in speech belongs clearly to this tradition in
that we too would view rhythm as one of what Cook-Gumperz/Gumperz
(1976) have called contextualization cues, these being vocal or non-vocal
effects which signal and in a sense constitute the context in which the cur­
rent utterance ('what comes now') should be interpreted, or which
2 ELIZABETH COUPER-KUHLEN AND PETER AUER
foreshadow an upcoming change in context relevant for the interpretation
of 'what comes next' (cf. also Auer 1986). However, there are certain
respects in which we feel that Erickson/Shultz's work is in need of clarifica­
tion and indeed extension. For instance: (i) What counts as a beat? (ii) How
do we judge the regularity of beats? (iii) What exactly can and does rhythm
contextualize in verbal interaction? In this paper we shall propose a set of
answers to (i) and (ii) as preliminaries to our major concern, question (iii),
which we will treat with respect to question-answer sequences in everyday
conversation.
1.1 What counts as a beat?
According to Erickson/Shultz interactional rhythm is established by
both verbal and non-verbal, i.e. non-vocal, points of emphasis: specifically,
by so-called 'stressed tonal nuclei' (words or syllables marked by a shift in
pitch and an increase in loudness) in speech, and by gesture (points of
extension or flexion) and shifts in posture in body motion (1982: 75). How­
ever, their detailed discussion of rhythm in an actual interview suggests that
when speech and kinesic points of emphasis do not coincide exactly in time,
it is the vocal cues which have priority in marking the underlying rhythm
(1982: 92-93). The same discussion also implies that a shift in loudness with­
out a co-occurring shift in pitch is sufficient on its own to constitute a pulse
in the rhythm. From this it appears that simple stressed syllables (as
opposed to pitch accents or intonational nuclei) are sufficient for the con­
stitution of rhythm, and that kinesic events are not essential (indeed must
sometimes be overlooked) in the establishment of interactional rhythm. We
shall therefore concentrate here on the rhythms of speech, which, we
hypothesize, stressed syllables and under certain restricted conditions 'si­
lent' stresses are sufficient to create and sustain.
Our experience with the speech rhythm of everyday conversation,
however, suggests that in contrast to, say, verse, not every stressed syllable
in speech need constitute a beat in the over-all rhythmic frame. Consider,
for instance, the following example from a BBC radio phone-in:
G: I think when you've got a nice name like Richard why they call
you Dick I'll never know
According to the auditory criteria for stress advocated in descriptive Eng­
lish phonetics (greater relative length, greater relative loudness and/or