Expressing evidentiality through prosody? Prosodic voicing in reported speech in Spanish colloquial conversations
Abstract The present paper attempts to establish the evidential character of the special prosodic configuration associated with direct reported discourse (DRD). A variety of expressive meanings have been commonly attributed to this marked prosodic configuration of DRD (such as expression of stance, emotion, mimicking, alignment). However, the concurrence of pragmatic/expressive meanings together with evidentiality is very frequent in ‘non-evidential’ languages like Spanish. Therefore, we argue that the prosody in DRD also signals ‘reported’ or ‘quoted’ discourse and, therefore, the presence of evidentiality. To provide evidence for this latter claim, 449 instances of DRD have been extracted…
Expressing digression linguistically: Do digressive markers exist?
Abstract This paper analyzes the relationship between digressions and topic shifts in the light of the Spanish marker por cierto . Against the standard explanation, which takes digression as a well-established linguistic operation, digression is regarded as a rhetorical operation, underspecified at the linguistic level. The most conspicuous trace of digression, the so-called digressive markers , cannot be distinguished from topic shifters on the basis of the instruction provided by the marker alone. Thus, both types of markers should be grouped together as a single class, that of “new relevant information markers” (NRIMs). The perceived differences between topic shifters and digressive mark…