The grammar of conversation: How much of it is syntax?

Abstract

This paper examines the interaction between conversational pragmatics and syntax with a view to identifying to what extent pragmatic interpretation can be read off syntactic structure. Building on empirical data from Romanian, it argues, from a generative grammar perspective, for a speech acts component of clausal derivations. The speech act maps the pragmatic roles of speaker, hearer and the topic of their conversation (the sentience dimension) to syntactic positions.

Keywords

• speech act
• pragmatic roles
• syntax
• E-adverbs
• Romanian