Article published In:
Studies in LanguageVol. 34:1 (2010) ► pp.36–74
Sentence-initial I think (that) and I believe (that)
Prosodic evidence for uses as main clause, comment clause and discourse marker
Sentence-initial pronoun-verb combinations such as I think, I believe are ambiguous between main clause use on the one hand and adverbial or discourse use on the other hand. We approach the topic from a prosodic perspective. Based on corpus data from spoken British English the prosodic patterns of sentence-initial I think and I believe are analysed and related to their interpretation in context. We show that these expressions may function as main clause (MC), comment clause (CC) or discourse markers (DM) and that the speaker’s choice is reflected in the prosody. The key feature is prosodic prominence: MCs are reflected by accent placement on the pronoun, CCs by an accent on the verb, while DMs are unstressed.
Cited by (59)
Cited by 59 other publications
O’Grady, Gerard
2024. Theme in spoken language: when a tone group is not a clause. Journal of World Languages 10:1 ► pp. 76 ff. 
Ioanesyan, E. R.
2023. Appellative Constructions with Epistemic Modality Predicates. Nauchnyi dialog 12:5 ► pp. 55 ff.
Liu, Nannan
2023. Speaking in the first-person singular or plural. Interpreting. International Journal of Research and Practice in Interpreting 25:2 ► pp. 239 ff.
Staps, Camil & Johan Rooryck
2023. The interpretation of [+distal] in demonstratives and complementizers. Linguistics 61:5 ► pp. 1195 ff.
Traugott, Elizabeth
2023. Context in Historical Linguistics. In The Cambridge Handbook of Language in Context, ► pp. 49 ff.
Westra, Evan
2023. Symbolic belief in social cognition. Philosophical Perspectives 37:1 ► pp. 388 ff.
Ahn, Mikyung & Foong Ha Yap
2022. On the evolution of a multifunctional discourse marker: A Discourse Grammar analysis of Korean com. Journal of Pragmatics 195 ► pp. 31 ff.
De Cristofaro, Elisa, Claudia Crocco, Linda Badan & Koen Plevoets
2022. Discourse markers and turn-planning at the pragmatics–prosody interface: The case of allora in spoken Italian. Journal of Pragmatics 198 ► pp. 125 ff.
Hundt, Marianne & Rahel Oppliger
2022. (The) fact is …/(Die) Tatsache ist …focaliser constructions in English and German are similar but subject to different constraints. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 27:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Kojadinović, Zlatan
2022. Variation in the prosody of illocutionary adverbs. Open Linguistics 8:1 ► pp. 593 ff.
Magistro, Giuseppe, Claudia Crocco & Anne Breitbarth
2022. Information structure and Jespersen’s cycle. In Language Change at the Interfaces [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 275], ► pp. 35 ff.
Crible, Ludivine & Liesbeth Degand
2021. Co-occurrence and ordering of discourse markers in sequences: A multifactorial study in spoken French. Journal of Pragmatics 177 ► pp. 18 ff.
Degand, Liesbeth & Ludivine Crible
2021. Chapter 1. Discourse markers at the peripheries of syntax, intonation and turns. In Pragmatic Markers and Peripheries [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 325], ► pp. 19 ff.
Igor Douven
2021. Lotteries, Knowledge, and Rational Belief,
Shan, Yi
2021. Investigating the Interaction Between Prosody and Pragmatics Quantitatively: A Case Study of the Chinese Discourse Marker ni zhidao (“You Know”). Frontiers in Psychology 12
Shan, Yi
2023. Form (Prosody)-Meaning (Pragmatics) pairings of discourse markers: A case study of Nǐ zhīdào (‘You Know’) as a construction in Chinese media interviews. Language & Communication 93 ► pp. 136 ff.
Brinton, Laurel J.
2020. The development and pragmatic function of a non-inference marker. In Corpora and the Changing Society [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 96], ► pp. 251 ff.
Zinken, Jörg
2020. The Comparative Study of Social Action: What You Must and What You Can Do to Align with a Prior Speaker. Research on Language and Social Interaction 53:4 ► pp. 443 ff.
Кустова, Г.И., Kustova, G.I., Н.Б. Швелидзе & N.B. Shvelidze
2020. Системные свойства апеллятивных вводных конструкций (по данным Национального корпуса русского языка). Научно-техническая информация. Серия 2: Информационные процессы и системы :9 ► pp. 27 ff.
Freeman, Valerie
2019. Prosodic features of stances in conversation. Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology 10:1
Nuyts, Jan & Karolien Janssens
2019. Parentheticals revisited: The case of Dutchdenken. Folia Linguistica 53:s40-s2 ► pp. 475 ff.
Tompkins, Virginia, M. Jeffrey Farrar & Derek E. Montgomery
2019. Speaking Your Mind: Language and Narrative in Young Children's Theory of Mind Development [Advances in Child Development and Behavior, 56], ► pp. 109 ff.
Mantlik, Annette & Hans-Jörg Schmid
2018. Chapter 7. That-complementiser omission in N + be + that-clauses. In The Noun Phrase in English [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 246], ► pp. 187 ff.
Tantucci, Vittorio & Aiqing Wang
2018. Illocutional concurrences: The case of evaluative speech acts and face-work in spoken Mandarin and American English. Journal of Pragmatics 138 ► pp. 60 ff.
Zhao, Lucy, Nicole Dehé & Victoria A. Murphy
2018. From pitch to purpose: The prosodic–pragmatic mapping of [I + verb] belief constructions in English and Mandarin. Journal of Pragmatics 123 ► pp. 57 ff.
Heine, Bernd, Gunther Kaltenböck, Tania Kuteva & Haiping Long
2017. Cooptation as a discourse strategy. Linguistics 55:4
Newmeyer, Frederick J.
2017. Two Challenges for ‘Neo-Sassurean’ Approaches to Morphosyntax. In Formal Models in the Study of Language, ► pp. 49 ff.
Hanote, Sylvie & Jeanne Vigneron-Bosbach
2016. Genre, like, so : du micro- au macro- et vice versa. Modèles linguistiques XXXVII:73 ► pp. 77 ff.
Haselow, Alexander
2016. A processual view on grammar: macrogrammar and the final field in spoken syntax. Language Sciences 54 ► pp. 77 ff.
Lohmann, Arne & Christian Koops
2016. Aspects of discourse marker sequencing. In Outside the Clause [Studies in Language Companion Series, 178], ► pp. 417 ff.
Põldvere, Nele, Matteo Fuoli & Carita Paradis
2016. A study of dialogic expansion and contraction in spoken discourse using corpus and experimental techniques. Corpora 11:2 ► pp. 191 ff.
Shank, Christopher, Julie Van Bogaert & Koen Plevoets
2016. The diachronic development of zero complementation: A multifactorial analysis of the that/zero alternation with think, suppose, and believe. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 12:1
Shank, Christopher, Koen Plevoets & Julie Van Bogaert
2016. A multifactorial analysis of that/zero alternation. In Corpus-based Approaches to Construction Grammar [Constructional Approaches to Language, 19], ► pp. 201 ff.
이지원
2016. An Analysis of Lengthened Reactive Tokens in Mandarin conversation: Focusing on Koreans Speaking Chinese. Discourse and Cognition 23:4 ► pp. 87 ff.
Beijering, Karin
2015. The lexicalization-grammaticalization-pragmaticalization interface. In New Directions in Grammaticalization Research [Studies in Language Companion Series, 166], ► pp. 67 ff.
Gentens, Caroline
Gonen, Einat, Zohar Livnat & Noam Amir
2015. The discourse marker axshav (‘now’) in spontaneous spoken Hebrew: Discursive and prosodic features. Journal of Pragmatics 89 ► pp. 69 ff.
HANOTE, Sylvie
2015. Discours direct : syntaxe et prosodie. E-rea :12.2
HANOTE, Sylvie
2019. Le discours rapporté dans un corpus d’anglais oral : formes et frontières. E-rea :17.1
Koops, Christian & Arne Lohmann
2015. A quantitative approach to the grammaticalization of discourse markers. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 20:2 ► pp. 232 ff.
Maschler, Yael & Deborah Schiffrin
2015. Discourse MarkersLanguage, Meaning, and Context. In The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, ► pp. 189 ff.
TANTUCCI, VITTORIO
2015. Epistemic inclination and factualization: a synchronic and diachronic study on the semantic gradience of factuality. Language and Cognition 7:3 ► pp. 371 ff.
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs
2015. Investigating “periphery” from a functionalist perspective. Linguistics Vanguard 1:1 ► pp. 119 ff.
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs
2016. On the rise of types of clause-final pragmatic markers in English. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 17:1 ► pp. 26 ff.
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs
2020. The development of “digressive” discourse-topic shift markers in English. Journal of Pragmatics 156 ► pp. 121 ff.
Biber, Douglas & Shelley Staples
2014. Exploring the prosody of stance. In Spoken Corpora and Linguistic Studies [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 61], ► pp. 271 ff.
Boye, Kasper & Peter Harder
2014. (Inter)subjectification in a functional theory of grammaticalization. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 46:1 ► pp. 7 ff.
Boye, Kasper & Peter Harder
2021. Complement-taking predicates, parentheticals and grammaticalization. Language Sciences 88 ► pp. 101416 ff.
López-Couso, María José & Belén Méndez-Naya
López-Couso, María José & Belén Méndez-Naya
2014. On the origin of clausal parenthetical constructions: Epistemic/evidential parentheticals withseem
and impersonalthink. In Diachronic Corpus Pragmatics [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 243], ► pp. 189 ff.
Matić, Dejan, Rik van Gijn & Robert D. van Valin Jr.
2014. Information structure and reference tracking in complex sentences: An overview. In Information Structure and Reference Tracking in Complex Sentences [Typological Studies in Language, 105], ► pp. 1 ff.
Travis, Catherine E. & Rena Torres Cacoullos
van Putten, Saskia
2014. Left dislocation and subordination in Avatime (Kwa). In Information Structure and Reference Tracking in Complex Sentences [Typological Studies in Language, 105], ► pp. 71 ff.
Bolly, Catherine
2009. Constructionalisation et structure informationnelle. Quand la grammaticalisation ne suffit pas pour expliquer tu vois. Linx :61 ► pp. 103 ff.
Bolly, Catherine
2010. Flou phraséologique, quasi-grammaticalisation et pseudo marqueurs de discours : un no man’s land entre syntaxe et discours ?. Linx :62-63 ► pp. 11 ff.
BOLLY, CATHERINE
2012. Du verbe de perception visuelle au marqueur parenthétique ‘tu vois’: Grammaticalisation et changement linguistique. Journal of French Language Studies 22:2 ► pp. 143 ff.
[no author supplied]
2015. Éric Mélac, L’évidentialité en anglais : approche contrastive à partir d’un corpus anglais-tibétain. Études mongoles et sibériennes, centrasiatiques et tibétaines 46
[no author supplied]
[no author supplied]
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 2 november 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.