From justification to modulation
Similarities and differences of after all and datte
Takahiro Otsu | Kyushu University, Japan
The English discourse marker after all and the
Japanese discourse marker datte have been commonly claimed to
give a reason or justification to the preceding utterance, and therefore, these
two expressions are regarded as the equivalent translation counterparts to each
other. This paper first attempts to propose that such an equated account is
motivated by these two discourse markers constructing a similar inferential
schema involved in the interpretation of the utterance including them. In fact,
datte and after all make manifest similar
polyfunctions according to the syntactic position although they encode different
lexical information. This is because these two discourse markers are indicators
that contribute to the inferential phase of communication by various degrees of
modulation of a cognitive gap between two different assumptions. Another aim of
this paper is to differentiate a procedural constraint these two indicators
encode on the interpretation of the utterance.
Keywords:
after all
,
datte
, procedural constraint, higher-level explicature, modulation, cognitive gap
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Multifunctionality and syntactic positions
- 2.1
After all
- 2.1.1Clause-final use
- 2.1.2Clause-medial use
- 2.1.3Clause-initial use
- 2.2
Datte
- 2.2.1Clause-final use
- 2.2.2Clause-medial use
- 2.2.3Clause-initial use
- 2.1
After all
- 3.Common inferential schema
- 4.Procedural constraints of after all and
datte
- 4.1Constraints on implicatures and constraints on higher-level explicatures
- 4.2Utterance-initial use of datte
- 5.Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
- Abbreviations
-
References -
Data references
Published online: 25 November 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.17028.ots
https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.17028.ots
References
References
Blakemore, Diane
Carston, Robyn
Fretheim, Thorstein
Hasunuma, Akiko
Kato, Yoko
Lewis, Diana M.
Matsumoto, Yo
Mori, Junko
Murillo, Silvia
Oki, Yuko
1996 Taiwagata setuzokushi ni okeru shoryaku no kikou to
gyakusetu – datte to nazenara,
demo
– (The mechanism of deletion and contradiction in
interactive conjunctions – datte to
nazenara, demo
–). In Osamu Nakajo (ed.), Ronshu kotoba to kyouiku (Essays: Language and education), 97–111. Tokyo: Izumi Shoin.
Otsu, Takahiro
Tada, Tomoko
Takiura, Masato
Traugott, Elizabeth C.
1997 The discourse connective after all: A historical
pragmatic account. Paper presented at the Sixteenth International Congress of Linguists, Paris, July 1997.
Wilson, Deirdre
Data references
BNC = The British National Corpus
WB = Wordbanks