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Abstract

Abstract

In spontaneous discourse, a communicator may be unable or unwilling to produce certain words for contextual reasons. An effective strategy to overcome such difficulties is the use of a placeholder like . It has been observed that in some languages, demonstrative-related placeholder forms also serve as an interjective hesitator, the type of expression illustrated with , etc. This paper reveals that this functional duality is a broad phenomenon observed with not only demonstratives but also non-demonstrative forms such as -words. I investigate non-demonstrative forms in 14 languages and propose a functional account within Discourse Grammar. My contention is twofold: () syntactic, semantic, and prosodic differences between placeholders and interjective hesitators are reducible to differences between two grammatical domains, Sentence Grammar and Thetical Grammar; () the functional duality is captured in terms of cooptation, a process whereby a Sentence Grammar unit is transferred to a Thetical Grammar unit.

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/content/journals/10.1075/sl.23057.ser
2025-01-21
2025-02-15
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keywords: placeholder ; interjective hesitator ; sentence grammar ; discourse grammar ; thetical grammar
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