The intertwining of discourse, syntax, and lexicon in language use: the case of Huasteca Nahuatl pleonastic conditionals
The paper analyzes pleonastic conditionals (e.g., sweetheart, I understand. If you have to go, you have to go) in Huasteca Nahuatl, an Uto-Aztecan language spoken in Mexico. Based on conversational data, it is demonstrated that pleonastic conditionals in Huasteca Nahuatl have different discourse-pra...
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2024 |
| País: | Brasil |
| Institución: | Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP) |
| Repositorio: | Revista Liames (Online) |
| Idioma: | inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:ojs.periodicos.sbu.unicamp.br:article/8677116 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://periodicos.sbu.unicamp.br/ojs/index.php/liames/article/view/8677116 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Conditional clause Repetition Discourse Conversation Cláusula condicional Repetição Discurso Conversação Clásula condicional Repetición Conversación |
| Sumario: | The paper analyzes pleonastic conditionals (e.g., sweetheart, I understand. If you have to go, you have to go) in Huasteca Nahuatl, an Uto-Aztecan language spoken in Mexico. Based on conversational data, it is demonstrated that pleonastic conditionals in Huasteca Nahuatl have different discourse-pragmatic functions, such as surprise, disagreement, and indifference, etc. Moreover, it is argued that the different discourse-pragmatic functions of pleonastic conditionals are systematically associated with specific syntactic forms of the apodosis (i.e., whether the apodosis is a precise echo of the protasis or not) and with specific lexical preferences (i.e., verb lemmas appearing in the protasis and apodosis). It is proposed that these preferential co-occurrences are shaped by three usage-based factors: iconicity, discourse economy, and semantic coherence. |
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