{"title":"Nominal appositives in grammar and discourse","authors":"Edgar Onea, D. Ott","doi":"10.1353/lan.2022.0004","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In this article, we develop a theory of the form and interpretation of nonrestrictive nominal appositives (NAPs) by combining two recent syntactic and pragmatic approaches. Following Ott (2016), we assume that NAPs are independent elliptical speech acts, which are linearly interpolated into their host sentences in production. Building on insights in Onea 2016, we argue that NAPs make their pragmatic contribution as short answers to discourse-structuring potential questions. We show how these two assumptions combine to yield a comprehensive theory of NAPs that captures their central syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties and furthermore sheds light on the mechanisms that govern their linear interpolation.","PeriodicalId":17956,"journal":{"name":"Language","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9000,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"2","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Language","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2022.0004","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
Abstract
Abstract:In this article, we develop a theory of the form and interpretation of nonrestrictive nominal appositives (NAPs) by combining two recent syntactic and pragmatic approaches. Following Ott (2016), we assume that NAPs are independent elliptical speech acts, which are linearly interpolated into their host sentences in production. Building on insights in Onea 2016, we argue that NAPs make their pragmatic contribution as short answers to discourse-structuring potential questions. We show how these two assumptions combine to yield a comprehensive theory of NAPs that captures their central syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties and furthermore sheds light on the mechanisms that govern their linear interpolation.
期刊介绍:
Language, the official journal for the Linguistic Society of America, is published quarterly and contains articles, short reports, book reviews and book notices on all aspects of linguistics, focussing on the area of theoretical linguistics. Edited by Greg Carlson, Language serves a readership of over 5,000 and has been the primary literary vehicle for the Society since 1924.