Response particles as propositional anaphors

Authors

  • Manfred Krifka Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS) Berlin

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v23i0.2676

Keywords:

Response particles, polarity particles, discourse referents

Abstract

The paper explains response particles like yes and no as anaphoric elements that pick up propositional discourse referents that are introduced by preceding sentences. It is argued that negated antecedent clauses introduce two propositional discourse referents, which results in ambiguities of answers that is partly resolved by pragmatic optimization. The paper also discusses response particles like okay, right and uh-huh and uh-uh, and German ja, nein and doch.

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Published

2013-08-24

Issue

Proceedings of SALT 23

Section

Articles

License

Articles appearing in SALT are published under an author agreement with the Linguistic Society of America and are made available to readers under a Creative Commons Attribution License.