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Towards a model of the syntax–discourse interface: a syntactic analysis of please

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 March 2020

REBECCA WOODS
REBECCA WOODS*
Affiliation:
School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics Newcastle UniversityNewcastle upon TyneNE1 7RUUnited Kingdomrebecca.woods@newcastle.ac.uk
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Abstract

This article examines the syntax and semantics of please. Using a mainstream generative syntactic framework, I propose that syntactically integrated please is a discourse marker that marks the clause in which it occurs as a request. Please may appear clause-initially or clause-medially as determined by a number of factors, including clause type, modality, negation and the application of ellipsis. There is also a homophonous marker please that occurs in clause-final position; clause-final please does not mark requests per se but ‘bonds’ a speaker and addressee, reinforcing their relationship as requester and requestee. This analysis of please provides support for syntactic approaches to speech act structure, particularly the claim that illocutionary force is part of narrow syntax rather than a solely pragmatic phenomenon. The article provides support for pursuing a model of the syntax–discourse interface in which interactions between discourse markers and clause-internal functional elements, such as mood and modality, form the interface between syntax and discourse.

Keywords

syntax–discourse interfacespeech actsdiscourse particles
Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , March 2021 , pp. 121 - 153
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

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Footnotes

This article has been many years and many revisions in the making. The first iteration was produced during my ESRC 1+3 scholarship number ES/J500215/1 at the University of York. Thanks to colleagues and visitors at the University of York, in particular George Tsoulas, Norman Yeo, Maria-Margarita Makri, Elin McCready and Eytan Zweig, and the audience at ConSOLE XXIII (7–9 January 2015) in Paris, in particular Jon Ander Mendia, Imke Driemel, Andrew Murphy and Victor Pan, as well as two anonymous reviewers for Proceedings of ConSOLE XXIII, where an earlier version of this article appeared. The second iteration was submitted for the ISLE Richard M. Hogg Prize in 2017 – my thanks to the prize committee for their feedback, in particular Martin Hilpert and David Denison. This third iteration owes much to E Jamieson and two anonymous reviewers for their time and extensive comments and suggestions, as well as the help and patience of ELL editor Bernd Kortmann and secretary Melitta Cocan, as it turns out that the gestation of a child (and subsequent period of parental leave) is much shorter than that of (some) research ideas. All remaining errors are my own. The work is dedicated to the memory of the seventeen people killed in the 2015 Paris terror attacks, which coincided with ConSOLE XXIII.

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