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Part of
Discourse Phenomena in Typological Perspective
Edited by Alessandra Barotto and Simone Mattiola
[Studies in Language Companion Series 227] 2023
► pp. 167–199

Chapter 7
Polish że ‘that’ as an elaboration marker

Language-internal and cross-linguistic perspectives

| John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin
| University of Cologne

This chapter discusses a colloquial spoken use of the Polish subordinating conjunction że (lit. ‘that’) as an elaboration marker. Mainly, we argue that że has a core meaning of elaboration spanning a continuum of context-dependent discourse slots. One extreme end of it sees the canonical complementizer tasks, the other one sees the elaboration marker uses operating on the plane of discourse and spoken dialogic interaction. Much of the chapter demonstrates the contrasts between the two types. Additionally, the Polish pattern is reviewed against a cross-linguistic background of elaboration markers in discourse/text as well as a more fine-grained overview of forms signalling both elaboration (in discourse) and complementation (in clause-combining syntax).

Keywords: declarative complementizer, discourse marker, elaboration, Polish
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Corpus, data retrieval and sample
  • 3.Elaboration and its semantic subtypes
  • 4.Distributional differences between że1 and że2
    • 4.1że2-clauses are not embedded
    • 4.2że2-clauses may co-occur with complementizers
    • 4.3że2 is an optional element
    • 4.4że2-clauses are more varied
    • 4.5że2 need not introduce clauses and it can scope over speech acts
  • 5.Proposal: że1 and że2 share the procedural core meaning of ‘elaboration’
  • 6.Interactional uses of że2 in turn-taking
  • 7.Marking elaboration in clause combining and discourse analysis – some typological remarks
    • 7.1Clause combining
    • 7.2Discourse analysis
    • 7.3A unified account of rhetorical relations
  • 8.‘That’-complementizer forms serving as elaboration markers – a cross-linguistic perspective
  • 9.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 1 March 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.227.07guz
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