Functions of Language - Volume 19, Issue 2, 2012

The study takes a critical look at the status of syntactic functions within a multi-level view of grammatical relations. Re-examining the widespread approach to the traditional notion of ‘syntactic function’ that treats it as fitting into a system of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic functions, the syntactic functions are seen to be cognitively invisible vis-à-vis the other two, and this is assumed to be more than an irrelevant accident. After a brief review of theoretical treatments of syntactic functions within functionalism, the conclusion is reached that, contrary to what is commonly assumed, e.g. in FG or SFG, unlike functions on the other two levels, syntactic functions per se contribute nothing to sentence meaning, and thus should no longer be considered functions. Instead, this study treats them as syntactic figures, i.e. instrumental, multi-purpose, formal devices whose job it is to give optimal expression to functional content which may be of just two types: either semantic or pragmatic.

This study investigates an area of interpersonal pragmatic meaning in which the specific framing conditions of public Internet message boards seem to be particularly relevant: patterns of responses to rhetorical questions as one aspect of the negotiation of the rhetorical force of such questions among the participants in a discussion. Rhetorical questions are complex linguistic structures which are described in terms of a set of characteristic pragmatic features, including their answerhood (Ilie 1994, 1999). An analysis of approximately 900 postings to 22 English and 22 German Internet discussion threads on a range of comparable topics showed that rhetorical questions are often subject to negotiation by the participants in an interaction. The responses to such rhetorical questions play a crucial role in this process. This work examines all textual responses to questions that were interpreted as rhetorical and describes their structural patterns and frequency of use as well as different types and functions in the English- and the German-speaking groups. It also discusses the different patterns of use against the background of more general observations on communicative styles and practices across the two language communities.

Serial verb constructions (SVCs) are found in Creole languages and in the languages of West Africa, Southeast Asia, Amazonia, Oceania, and New Guinea. In this article we examine catenative verb constructions (CVCs) in English from a Role and Reference Grammar perspective and compare them with SVCs. More specifically, based on the set of syntactic and semantic properties of SVCs proposed by Kroeger (2004: 229–230), it will be demonstrated that CVCs in English have all of the characteristic syntactic and semantic properties of SVCs.

This usage-based and corpus-based study examines the use of verb-second clauses as restrictive postmodifiers of noun phrases in spoken German (ich kenn leute die haben immer pech ‘I know people they are always unlucky’) in relation to verb-final relative clauses. Previous accounts largely work with de-contextualised and constructed data and stop short of accounting for the discourse function of verb-second postmodifying structures. The ratio of verb-final relative clauses to postmodifying verb-second clauses does not indicate a shift towards main clause syntax. Rather, the verb-second clauses form part of a set of existential or presentational and ascriptive copular constructions which serve to highlight properties of entities and/or introduce discourse topics. Relative clauses can be used for such functions, but this is not as common. The syntactic and semantic features associated with postmodifying verb-second clauses can be seen as a direct result of their discourse function, which only a corpus analysis could reveal. The paper also comments on the wider related aspects of verb position, clause combining and pronoun use in spoken German from the perspective of a usage-based language model.