Brief description of the topic:
The class of discourse particles (sometimes also called "modal particles") includes the Norwegian words "da", "jo", "nok", "vel" and "n?", as in the sentence "Det m? {da / jo / nok / vel / n?} v?re massevis av fisk i disse vannene." ('There must [PRT] be lots of fish in these lakes', from Andvik 1992:3). Such particles constitute a field of inquiry that has received much attention in the recent literature; nevertheless, there are still many open questions to be addressed. In this course, we focus on different aspects of discourse particles (both from a descriptive and from a theoretical perspective) and we explore different semantic and syntactic approaches to such linguistic elements.
What do you learn?
The course will introduce students to syntactic and semantic properties of discourse particles (including a cross-linguistic perspective), and to current theoretical approaches. The course will give students a basis for independent research on the topic, as well as connected topics such as sentence adverbs, expressive meaning and sentential embedding.