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In:The Interpersonal Level in Functional Discourse Grammar
Edited by Monielly Serafim, Matthias Mittendorfer and Kees Hengeveld
[Studies in Language Companion Series 241] 2027
► pp. 159–188

I hereby propose

A modified analysis of performatives in FDG

 | University of Vienna
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
Abstract
Since Austin’s seminal 1955 lectures, numerous publications have been devoted to the pragmatic and semantic aspects of performatives; surprisingly little effort, however, has been made to integrate performatives, and their syntactic behaviour, into grammatical theory. One exception is the Functional Discourse Grammar analysis provided by Hengeveld & Mackenzie (2008), which captures not only the function of (English) performatives, but also accounts for some of their formal features. This chapter aims to improve and expand this analysis by considering a range of syntactic properties, such as the role of hereby, the occurrence of modifiers and the use of passive and embedded performatives. The result is a number of new analyses which together provide a more complete treatment of performatives in FDG.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Performatives: Special properties
  • 3.Performatives in FDG
    • 3.1Performatives in Hengeveld & Mackenzie (2008)
    • 3.2Some unresolved issues
  • 4.A modified FDG analysis
    • 4.1Self-referential hereby
      • 4.1.1The function of hereby
      • 4.1.2The position of hereby
      • 4.1.3Analysing hereby
    • 4.2Modification
      • A.The interpersonal manner kind
      • B.The speaker-oriented kind
      • C.The rhetorical kind
      • D.The intensifying kind
      • E.The representational kind
    • 4.3Passive performatives
    • 4.4Embedded performatives
    • 4.5Pronominalization
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Author queries
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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