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Ling04


Beyond sententialism 
Convenor:
Toshiyuki Sadanobu (Kyoto University)
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Section:
Language and Linguistics
Sessions:
Friday 27 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Brussels

Short Abstract:

While the term 'discourse' is widely used in linguistics, the nature of its components is often unquestioned. This panel reconsiders this issue through a critical examination of sententialism, a wide-spread view that discourse consists of sentences, and that only sentences are its basic components.

Long Abstract:

While the term 'discourse' is widely used in linguistics, the nature of its components is often unquestioned. This panel reconsiders this issue through a critical examination of sententialism, a wide-spread view of that discourse consists of sentences, and that only sentences are its basic components. Within this view, what we call a 'strong' form of sententialism treats all expressions that appear in discourse, including utterance with only single words or interjections, as sentences (e.g. Yoshio Nitta 2016 Bun to Zitairuikei o Tyushin ni, Kurosio). A 'weak' form of sententialism (e.g. Carlota Smith 2003 Modes of Discourse, CUP), on the other hand, maintains the traditional notion of sentence as syntactically complete and regards discourse as composed of complete-sentence utterances. In effect, it tends to assume that syntactically incomplete utterances, which do appear in discourses, can be completed by "restoring" the "missing" elements from the context.

We argue that neither form of sententialism captures the nature of discourse components adequately. By closely analyzing syntactically "incomplete" utterances appearing in Japanese-language discourse, the papers demonstrate that discourse consists of: (a) utterances that are in fact incomplete, as in cases when an utterance was interrupted by another speaker and (b) utterances that are seemingly incomplete (e.g. one-word or one-clause utterances), but require no syntactic supplementation. We contend that the latter are structurally complete forms in and of themselves (as long as it is "complete" in terms of the meaning). Moreover, we show that these two types of utterances are not clearly differentiated but in fact are on a continuum that includes intermediary types as well.

The panel consists of the following four research presentations and discussion:

Presentation 1: Is "one-word sentence" a sentence?: An examination of sententialism from pragmatic and phonological perspectives.

Presentation 2: Why are "unfinished" sentences complete? The case of Japanese -te ending utterances.

Presentation 3: 'Structural incompletion' as a communicative strategy: What motivates utterances starting in the middle?

Presentation 4: Sentence bias in the analysis of 'co-construction' in Japanese conversation.

Accepted papers:

Session 1 Friday 27 August, 2021, -