An empirical study on the semantics-pragmatics of two Romance confirmational tags

This paper provides a fine-grained characterization of two confirmational tags in Catalan, oi? and eh?, starting with the novel claim that, despite appearances, they do not have the same distribution or meaning. While oi? is a rather unconstrained confirmational, eh? is proved to be sensitive to wh...

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Main Authors: Elena Castroviejo, Laia Mayol
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona 2024-12-01
Series:Isogloss
Subjects:
Online Access:https://revistes.uab.cat/isogloss/article/view/406
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author Elena Castroviejo
Laia Mayol
author_facet Elena Castroviejo
Laia Mayol
author_sort Elena Castroviejo
collection DOAJ
description This paper provides a fine-grained characterization of two confirmational tags in Catalan, oi? and eh?, starting with the novel claim that, despite appearances, they do not have the same distribution or meaning. While oi? is a rather unconstrained confirmational, eh? is proved to be sensitive to whether the main predicate of the sentence anchor p is objective or subjective. We ultimately propose that confirmational questions with oi? make a request for confirmation of the truth of the sentence anchor, whereas a confirmational with eh? is a request for the commitment of the addressee to the truth of the sentence anchor. Two consequences emerge from our analysis: oi? should be preferred when factual truths instead of opinions are conveyed, while eh? should be preferred in contexts where the speaker is not necessarily interested in finding out the truth of p. These predictions are tested in three experimental studies, which provide empirical support for the theoretical proposal regarding the different pragmatic contribution of both tags.
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institution Kabale University
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publisher Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
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spelling doaj-art-9c5d5e8f6f3041bba32d250e504375502025-01-28T03:01:58ZengUniversitat Autònoma de BarcelonaIsogloss2385-41382024-12-0110710.5565/rev/isogloss.406An empirical study on the semantics-pragmatics of two Romance confirmational tagsElena Castroviejo0Laia Mayol1Ikerbasque & University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)Pompeu Fabra University This paper provides a fine-grained characterization of two confirmational tags in Catalan, oi? and eh?, starting with the novel claim that, despite appearances, they do not have the same distribution or meaning. While oi? is a rather unconstrained confirmational, eh? is proved to be sensitive to whether the main predicate of the sentence anchor p is objective or subjective. We ultimately propose that confirmational questions with oi? make a request for confirmation of the truth of the sentence anchor, whereas a confirmational with eh? is a request for the commitment of the addressee to the truth of the sentence anchor. Two consequences emerge from our analysis: oi? should be preferred when factual truths instead of opinions are conveyed, while eh? should be preferred in contexts where the speaker is not necessarily interested in finding out the truth of p. These predictions are tested in three experimental studies, which provide empirical support for the theoretical proposal regarding the different pragmatic contribution of both tags. https://revistes.uab.cat/isogloss/article/view/406question tagsconfirmational tagsbiased questionsCatalanexperimental pragmatics
spellingShingle Elena Castroviejo
Laia Mayol
An empirical study on the semantics-pragmatics of two Romance confirmational tags
Isogloss
question tags
confirmational tags
biased questions
Catalan
experimental pragmatics
title An empirical study on the semantics-pragmatics of two Romance confirmational tags
title_full An empirical study on the semantics-pragmatics of two Romance confirmational tags
title_fullStr An empirical study on the semantics-pragmatics of two Romance confirmational tags
title_full_unstemmed An empirical study on the semantics-pragmatics of two Romance confirmational tags
title_short An empirical study on the semantics-pragmatics of two Romance confirmational tags
title_sort empirical study on the semantics pragmatics of two romance confirmational tags
topic question tags
confirmational tags
biased questions
Catalan
experimental pragmatics
url https://revistes.uab.cat/isogloss/article/view/406
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