A constructional account of the modal particle ‘ja’ in Texas German
The last decade has seen the expansion of systematic study of spoken language within Construction Grammar (Fried & Östman 2005, Östman 2006,
Günthner 2006, Imo 2007). While most studies have only noted that a specific syntactic pattern may have different manifestations in spoken language and in ‘standard’ grammar, the emphasis in these studies has been on the domain of the sentence/utterance as the appropriate context of analysis (e.g. Lambrecht & Lemoine 2005). To overcome this bias, this paper presents a case study of a constructional representation and analysis of a regular patterning in natural discourse, namely the modal particle ja in Texas German, a critically endangered dialect (see Boas 2009, Boas & Pierce 2011).
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Texas German: History and documentation
- 3.Distribution of English and German DPs and MPs in Texas German
- 4.Construction Grammar and Frame Semantics
- 5.Formalizing the distribution of ja in TxG
- 5.1Frame-evoking senses of ja
- 5.2Pragmatics of Implicit Anchoring (PIA)
- 5.3Formalizing discourse patterns as constructions
- 6.Conclusions and outlook
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Acknowledgment
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Notes
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References