Experiencers at the syntax-pragmatics interface. The case of the jo ‘I’ – construction in Catalan

This paper aims to support the thesis that Speech Act related operators have landing sites in syntax, specifically at the syntax-pragmatics interface. In order to attain this goal, it presents the first formal analysis of a construction, dubbed the jo ‘I’ – construction, that shows an overt first pe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Glossa (London) Vol. 10; no. 1; pp. 1 - 33
Main Authors: Espinal, M.Teresa, Cyrino, Sonia
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: London Open Library of Humanities 18.04.2025
Ubiquity Press
Subjects:
Accentuation
Catalan language
Declarative sentences
Intonation
Languages
Operators
Person
Pitch
Pragmatics
Pronouns
Research Article
Romance languages
Semantics
Speech
Speech acts
Speeches
Subjectivity
Syntactic structures
Syntax
Syntax pragmatics interface
jo 'I'-construction
declaration speech act
Speech Act related operators
syntax-pragmatics interface
ISSN:2397-1835, 2397-1835
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:This paper aims to support the thesis that Speech Act related operators have landing sites in syntax, specifically at the syntax-pragmatics interface. In order to attain this goal, it presents the first formal analysis of a construction, dubbed the jo ‘I’ – construction, that shows an overt first person strong pronoun sitting in sentence-initial position of declarative sentences both in pro-drop and partial pro-drop languages of the Romance family. Taking Catalan as a case in point, it is shown that, prosodically, this first person strong pronoun has a particular intonation (a rising pitch accent followed by a high boundary tone). Syntactically, it corresponds not to a subject but to a (kind of) hanging topic that requires a resumptive element in the clause, while semantically it introduces a reference to the speaker who at the time of uttering the sentence is performing a subjective declaration speech act.
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ISSN:2397-1835
2397-1835
DOI:10.16995/glossa.17284