Kerstin Fischer: A Semantic/Pragmatic Model of Particles - What Does it Take?
A model of the semantics/pragmatics of particles first of all has to account for the different
interpretations of the items of the class. This means that it has to describe precisely and
exhaustively the different readings a particle may get in its different structural contexts.
Secondly, it also has to account for the relationship between these different readings. Just listing
the different interpretations treats the items under consideration as homonymous, leaving
unexplained how the interpretations observable are related, learnable, interpretable, etc. The
problem that research has focussed either on finding an abstract semantic meaning of a given
particle, failing to account for its functional variability, or on describing the whole list of their
pragmatic functions without accounting for the relation between these different readings,
Hentschel & Weydt 1989 have called the particle paradox. While finding a common abstract
meaning may not be the only way to indicate the relatedness of the interpretations of a given
item (see for instance the approaches taken in Östman 1981, Schiffrin 1987, Mosegaard Hansen
1998, Fischer 2000), showing the connections between the different interpretations of an item
seems to be an essential requirement for a semantic/pragmatic model of particles.
Thirdly, it would be desirable if also the relationship between the different items regarded as
particles would be clear, if we could explain why a given particle lexeme may function in
different word classes and what the criteria are to regard particular particle uses as instances of
particular word classes. The question is thus also what makes a particle a discourse particle, a
modal particle, what an adverb or a conjunction.
A fourth requirement may be that the model to be developed should be unified such that the
different requirements are a natural consequence of the interaction of the components of the
model. For instance, the criteria for the word class memberships should not be different from
those which guide their distribution and their pragmatic interpretation.
A model of the meanings and functions of particles will be presented that fulfills all of these
requirements. It is based on the combination of three components: an invariant meaning which is
common to all occurrences of a given particle, a set of communicative domains to which the
invariant meaning aspects refer and that are word class specific, and a set of linguistic
constructions (Goldberg 1995, Fillmore & Kay 1995), form-meaning pairs, which are language
dependent.
Using the example of German doch which may function as discourse, answer, and modal
particle, as well as a conjunction, it will be shown how the invariant meaning, which is described
in NSM terms (Wierzbicka 1991, 1992), can motivate the different interpretations possible. What
interpretations doch may get is determined by the constructions it may enter. These
constructions, which describe the structural contexts in which a particle may occur and which
identify the communicative domains to which the particle meaning refer, are word class specific.
To sum up, the model proposed accounts for all four requirements: It accounts for the whole
functional spectrum a particle may fulfill and for the relation between the different readings by
motivating the individual interpretations by the invariant meaning. It also provides the
relationship between the items of a word class by specifying the different reference elements
which distinguish items from different word classes. Finally, it fulfills the requirement that the
definition of the word classes be a natural consequence of the semantic/pragmatic model.
Universität Hamburg, Fachbereich Informatik, Arbeitsbereich Natürlichsprachliche Systeme