This paper focuses on the microvariation concerning distribution and functions of certain interrogative discourse particles found in several central southern Italian dialects. These show many similarities terms both their morphological shapes (being homophonous to wh-phrase corresponding English ‘what’) syntactic within sentence, that they all occur at beginning polar questions. However, a care...

An implemented AI reasoning system called ATT-Meta is sketched. It addresses not only AI issues but also ones that are salient in psychology, philosophy, cognitive linguistics, discourse pragmatics and other disciplines. These issues include the Simulation-Theory/Theory-Theory debate and Fauconnier and Turner’s notion of conceptual blending. The system performs metaphor-based reasoning and reas...

An important factor of argument mining in dialog or multilog data is the framing with which interlocutors put forth their arguments. By using rhetorical devices such as hedging or reference to the Common Ground, speakers relate themselves to their interlocutors, their arguments, and the ongoing discourse. Capitalizing on theoretical linguistic insights into the semantics and pragmatics of disco...

The present investigation was designed to study the production and comprehension of specific means for information highlighted by advanced Iranian learners of English as a Foreign Language. The study focused on the discourse-pragmatically motivated variations of the basic word order such as inversion, pre-posing, it- and Wh-clefts. After taking the Nelson test, a homogeneous group was settled. ...

In order to generate cohesive discourse, many of the relations holding between text segments need to be signalled to the reader by means of cue words, or discourse markers. Programs usually do this in a simplistic way, e.g., by using one marker per relation. In reality, however, language ooers a very wide range of markers from which informed choices should be made. In order to account for the v...

The study analyzes the apology delivered by the then-democratic Presidential contender in 2007, Senator Barack H. Obama, to the Indian-American community. This apology succeeded in convincing American citizens of Obama’s goodwill and clean political standards, which eventually led him to surpass his chief opponent, Senator Hillary R. Clinton and become the President of the United States. The st...

................................................................................ 1 Chapter 1: General Introduction ................................................... 2 1.1 Specific Language Impairment ................................................ 2 1.1.1: Diagnostic criteria ..................................................... 5 1.1.2: Characteristics of SLI ..................................

Although studies on pragmatics in general and politeness in particular abound in the literature, impoliteness has been largely ignored. In the present study, participants filled out either the Persian or English version of a discourse completion test (DCT). The researchers analyzed collected answers to discover the relationship between impoliteness and power. Furthermore, the researchers compar...