Reviewed by Anastassia Zabrodskaja, Tallinn University

This volume consists of twelve papers that are dedicated to a crosslinguistic study of pragmatic particles. Among the wide range of languages studied are English, Norwegian, Dutch, German, Swedish, Spanish, and French.

Focusing on epistemic markers I think, obviously, and of course, Peter White and Motoki Sano (‘Dialogistic positions and anticipated audiences a framework for stylistic comparisons’) investigate the variability in how speakers and writers position themselves intersubjectively with respect to both other speakers and potential respondents. Aspectual particles equivalent to English already, not yet, still, and not anymore are analyzed by Willy Vandeweghe (‘Aspectual particles in some European languages’). The question of whether other languages have primary contrastive discourse markers equivalent to English but and, if so, whether these markers pattern similarly to but is raised by Bruce Fraser in ‘On the universality of discourse markers’.

The translation of the enigmatic well is addressed by Stig Johansson in ‘How well can well be translated? On the English discourse particle well and its correspondences in Norwegian and German’. Johansson uses the English-Norwegian Parallel Corpus (ENPC) and the Oslo Multilingual Corpus to investigate how well is rendered in Norwegian and German translations and which Norwegian forms give rise to well in translations into English. Also using the ENPC, Hilde Hasselgård (‘“Not now”: On non-correspondence between the cognate adverbs now and na’) notes that this time adverb has developed different discourse functions in the two languages: although now functions primarily as a textual marker (i.e. continuative) in English, na is an interpersonal, modal particle in Norwegian. Following a functional approach, Ad Foolen’s case study on Dutch toch and German doch distinguishes different uses of these particles and contrasts their polysemy patterns (‘Polysemy patterns in contrast: The case of Dutch toch and German doch’).

Using a bidirectional English-Swedish translation corpus, Bengt Altenberg (‘The function of adverbial connectors in second initial position in English and Swedish’) shows that in English and Swedish additive connectors have a strong tendency to be placed initially, whereas second position is most characteristic of contrastive and exemplifying connectors. The role of verbs as pragmatic particles in Solv, a dialect of Swedish, is explored by Jan-Ola Östman (‘Constructions in crosslanguage research: Verbs as pragmatic particles in Solv’). Using the framework of construction grammar, Östman argues for a view of pragmatic particles as constructions and elucidates the functions of particles and, in particular, the function of question particles in Solv.

Comparing English and French adversative relational pragmatic markers, Diana Lewis (‘Contrastive analysis of adversative relational markers, using comparable corpora’) proposes four language-independent parameters for marker choice constraints: (i) the nature of the adversativity, (ii) the status, (iii) the organization of the flow information, and (iv) the relative salience of successive segments. Dominique Willems and Annemie Demol (‘Vraiment and really in contrast: When truth and reality meet’) describe the multiple uses of the French particle vraiment in monolingual spoken and written French and in contrast with English really.

Using data from the British National Corpus, Angela Downing (‘The English pragmatic marker surely and its functional counterparts in Spanish’) concludes that there is no single counterpart to surely in all its nuances in Peninsular Spanish. Finally, Anna-Brita Stenström’s study is dedicated to ‘The Spanish discourse markers: O sea and pues and their English correspondences’

This volume stands out as a valuable and insightful contribution to our understanding of the intricate nature of comparing pragmatic markers and how these markers are typologically and contrastively encoded in European languages.