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Discourse Particles: Syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and historical aspects
Edited by Xabier Artiagoitia, Arantzazu Elordieta and Sergio Monforte
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 276] 2022
► pp. 131–156

Chapter 5
Outer particles vs tag particles

A distinction in homophony

| University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)

This article aims to draw a syntactic analysis that accounts for the differing properties of two sets of discourse particles: Outer (or Final) Particles (OutPs) and Tag Particles (TagPs). In recent years, researchers have built a syntactic model to accommodate OutPs (Haegeman 2014; Wiltschko & Heim 2016; a.o.), but TagPs have received little attention. In order to highlight the different nature of these two sets of particles, I will focus on two segmentally homophonous Basque particles: alaOutP and alaTag . After discussing their distinct prosodic, syntactic and pragmatic properties, I will argue that these particles show structural differences: while OutPs merge in the right periphery of the clause, TagPs are intransitive X0s and head their own Speech Act Phrase (SAP).

Keywords: discourse particles, syntax, pragmatics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Introduction to discourse particles
    • 2.1Syntactic models for discourse particles: An overview
    • 2.2General overview of Basque particles
  • 3.Appearances are deceptive
    • 3.1Intonation
    • 3.2Word order and syntax
    • 3.3Pragmatics
    • 3.4Interim summary
  • 4.Accommodating tagPs in syntax
    • 4.1Previous accounts of the syntax of tagPs
    • 4.2Proposal
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
  • Corpus references
Published online: 17 May 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.276.05itu
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