Ellipsis and Response Systems: A Usage and Experimental-based approach (1/4)

Tuesday 13 June 2023, 14:00 to 16:00
Invité: 
Jong-Bok Kim (Kyung Hee University, invité Labex EFL)
Organisation: 
Anne Abeillé (LLF)
Lieu: 

LLF – Bât. ODG

Jong-Bok Kim (Kyung Hee University, Seoul)
Response systems and an interactive model of grammar

Focusing on the answering particles to polar questions, the lecture sets out with key puzzles raised in understanding their proper uses: mapping relations from simple particles (e.g., yes, no) to complete propositional meaning, parametric differences across languages, effects of the biased contextual information, and so forth (Ginzburg & Sag 2000, Krifka 2013, Roelofsen & Farkas 2015, Holmberg 2016). Traditional wisdom has assumed that languages adopt either the truth-based or polarity-based answering system. The lecture discusses the implications of comprehension and production experiments, and suggests that the two-way distinction of answering systems is rather too restrictive and further that linguistic cues (antecedents) are not enough for the proper use of response particles. The experiment results support the view that it is contextual evidence that plays a pivotal role in the uses of answering particles. Based on these findings, I argue for an interactive model of grammar where the grammar of response systems centers on the interplay among grammatical components such as lexical semantics, syntactic/semantic constraints, and discourse.