Abstract The study explores Chafe’s one-new-idea constraint in two short extracts of natural multimodal interaction in two Trans-Himalayan (Tibeto-Burman) languages: Burmese and Anal Naga. It corroborates the overall tendency in both extracts for one new idea per intonation unit on average. However, the examination of frequent exceptions to this tendency indicates that this is not a cognitive constraint, as informatively much denser intonation units are processed with no challenge for interactants. The counterexamples suggest that the phenomenon emerges from more basic factors, and primarily from attention allocation, joint attention alignment and its interactional monitoring, and intonational partitioning for turn-management. As such, the observed tendency is a joint product of communicative and cognitive factors that shape conversation structure into sequences of locally monitored attention shifts.
Abstract This paper examines the register variation of negative conditionals in English. The main expression types for English negative conditionals are negative if -conditionals and unless -conditionals. These two constructions were studied in five registers of the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). The results show that negative if -conditionals differ from unless -conditionals in several respects. Unless -conditionals contain few of the hallmarks of conditional constructions: they seldom appear in initial position, they shun the use of past tense or subjunctive morphology to indicate hypotheticality or counterfactuality, and their main clauses are almost never introduced by then . Different registers are found to be associated with differences in clause order, the syntactic rank of the clause, tense choice in both protasis and apodosis, and the polarity of the apodosis. There are also phraseological patterns that are highly register-specific, such as scalar if not or the if not for construction. The grammar of unless -conditionals is found to be less variable, and unless -conditionals also display less phraseological patterning. The findings highlight the interplay between register variation and degrees of schematicity.
Abstract This paper offers an analysis of rising-intoned éi in Mandarin conversation, specifically as it is produced in the wake of question-answer sequences. Examining the particle’s use both as a stand-alone unit implementing its own action, and as a preface to additional turn components and the actions thereby implemented, we argue that éi in third position is best conceived of as a change-of-state token marking an epistemic discrepancy. Paralleling what has been argued for Japanese eh , Mandarin éi flags something in the talk or environment as departing from the speaker’s pre-existing knowledge, supposition, expectation, or orientation. In third position of a question-answer sequence, it is the answer (produced in second position) that the éi targets and problematizes in this way, making relevant subsequent conduct that works to resolve the discrepancy. In light of the fact that prior interactional research on Mandarin éi has focused largely on the particle’s use in sequence-initiating actions, the paper concludes with a discussion of three possible theoretical accounts for the apparent diversity of its interactional functions.
