Although intonation has been traditionally associated with the expression of attitudes and intentions on the part of the speaker, little is known about whether sociopragmatic factors, such as power or social distance, or situational ones, like physical distance or insistence, can constrain the use and felicity of pitch contours. This article investigates the felicity conditions underlying the c...

this paper reports on the findings of a study designed to investigate the cultural and social complexities governing the compliment responses among the persian native speakers. 200 persian respondents took a 24-item discourse completion task (dct) while 15 native field workers were also set responsible for collecting the examples of complimenting exchanges they either observed or participated i...

This paper reports on the findings of a study designed to investigate the cultural and social complexities governing the compliment responses among the Persian native speakers. 200 Persian respondents took a 24-item Discourse Completion Task (DCT) while 15 native field workers were also set responsible for collecting the examples of complimenting exchanges they either observed or participated i...

Abstract Nuclear stress (or sentence stress) as a prosodic feature marks information flow in spoken English, and has received some treatment the linguistics literature, most notably pragmatics, but less so newer phonological paradigms. Current theories might shed light on this feature, such Optimality Theory (OT) cognitive grammar (CG). This paper compares potential insights likely predictions ...