Speech Acts and Sentence Types Flashcards
What is a speech act?
an action performed when speaking
the different functions of a language
What are the 3 most common speech acts?
Statements; speaker asserting or denying the truth
Questions: question the truth or ask for more info
Commands: request an action to be performed
How does Somali indicate speech acts?
uses particles to make statements (waa) and questions (ma)
How does Greenandic indicate speech acts?
Marks questions statements with different iflectinal patterns
3rdSG suffix changes
What is a sentence type?
The conventional matching between a speech act and a particular grammatical strategy
What are the main sentence types?
Statements=declarative
Questions= interrogative
Commands=Imperative
Exclamation=exclamatory
How are sentence types related to mood?
declarative interrogative and imperative are all types of mood
all STs correspond to a mood but not all moods correspond to a ST
What is a direct speech act?
One that is expressed by the corresponding sentence type
What is an indirect speech act?
One that is expressed with a mismatch between a function and the ST used to express it
-command expressed by interrogative
What may sentence types involve?
Changes to word order
How do you identify the basic word order?
frequency: basic=most commonly used
avoid pronouns: may have specific syntactic behaviour
distribution; marked WO may occur in certain pragmatic contexts
subordinate clause: takes priority, often allows less variety than main and follows basic WO
neutral pragmatics: no pragmatic prominence to any constituent in indicative sentences
What sentence type are those that follow basic WO?
canonical
How does basic WO affect marking?
declarative sentences are unmarked
How is basic WO related to fixed WO?
If a language has a fixed WO, declarative will always follow basic
