Elena Castroviejo-Miró (University of the Basque Country) will give a virtual colloquium via Zoom. This will take place at an unusual time in the morning.
To participate, register for it with Zoom. This process will result in you receiving a Zoom link. The additional nuisance is regrettable but necessary.
Commitments and speech acts: and empirical study on the dual nature of Catalan eh?
(joint work with Laia Mayol)
The overarching goal of this talk is to discuss the normative view on speech acts in light of the empirical data provided by question tags in Catalan. In particular, I will first argue that Catalan question tag eh? has both a confirmational (EH1) and a non-confirmational use (EH2), both being analyzed as requests for public commitment. Interestingly, assertions can combine with EH1 as well as with EH2 under different discourse conditions; however, orders can only be followed by EH2, and exclamations, only by EH1. My second purpose is to lay out a characterization of the pragmatic functions of EH1 and EH2 that preserves a shared core meaning but also explains their different felicity conditions. Thirdly, I will reflect on how the distribution of eh? can shed light on the differences between assertions, exclamations, and orders.
