The Grammar of the Utterance: How to Do Things with Ibero-Romance

This book explores how speakers of Ibero-Romance languages use conversational units of language, such as vocatives, interjections, and particles, and illocutionary complementizers, which provide insight into how language-as-grammar builds the universe of discourse. It argues that the behavior of these conversation-oriented items reveals the underlying unity in how different Ibero-Romance languages, alongside their Romance cousins and Latin ancestors, use grammar to refer to the outside world. The empirical arguments are supported by a philosophical position that grammar configures the architecture of the mind.

Format: Hardback
Length: 368 pages
Publication date: 22 February 2022
Publisher: Oxford University Press

This comprehensive book delves into the intricate ways in which speakers of Ibero-Romance languages utilize conversational units of language, with a keen focus on the utilization of vocatives, interjections, and particles. It also explores the peculiar behavior of illocutionary complementizers, which resemble subordinators but exhibit distinct characteristics. Alice Corr posits that the analysis of these conversation-oriented items offers valuable insights into how language-as-grammar constructs the universe of discourse. The approach identifies a fundamental unity in how diverse Ibero-Romance languages, alongside their Romance cousins and Latin ancestors, employ grammar to establish connections between our inner world and the external reality. The empirical evidence supporting this argument is fortified by the philosophical stance that grammar's configurational architecture also shapes the architecture of the mind. By building upon existing work on discourse syntax, this book not only contributes fresh empirical and theoretical perspectives but also strives for explanatory adequacy through the adoption of a so-called "un-Cartesian" grammar of reference. In doing so, it formalizes the intuition that language users engage in actions rather than merely using words. Drawing upon a wealth of naturalistic data from social media and online corpora, complemented by elicited introspective judgements, The Grammar of the Utterance provides novel insights into the colloquial grammar and morphosyntactic variation of (Ibero-)Romance. Moreover, it showcases the significance of comparative work on this language family in advancing our empirical and conceptual understanding of grammar's organization.

Weight: 772g
Dimension: 165 x 240 x 29 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780198856597