A cross-linguistic perspective on grammar and negative epistemics in talk-in-interaction

In this introduction to the special issue on ‘Grammar and negative epistemics in talk-in-interaction’ we discuss the current state of research on the use of negative mental verb constructions such as I don’t know, I don’t understand, I don’t remember in social interaction. We scrutinize, in a cross-...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of pragmatics 2016-12, Vol.106, p.72-79
Main Authors: Lindström, Jan, Maschler, Yael, Pekarek Doehler, Simona
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Comparative linguistics
Epistemics
Epistemology
Grammar
Grammar-in-interaction
Grammaticalization
Grammaticization
Intersubjectivity
Language typology
Linguistics
Negative mental verb constructions
Pragmatic typology
Pragmatics
Social interaction
Syntactic structures
Talk-in-interaction
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Summary:In this introduction to the special issue on ‘Grammar and negative epistemics in talk-in-interaction’ we discuss the current state of research on the use of negative mental verb constructions such as I don’t know, I don’t understand, I don’t remember in social interaction. We scrutinize, in a cross-linguistic perspective, the grammatical and interactional features that emerge from existing research in the field, and spell out the specific contribution of the studies collected in this issue. We discuss how the cumulative evidence provided by these studies across a set of different languages, several of which are typologically unrelated, contributes to studies of talk-in-interaction and to the newly emerging field of Pragmatic Typology. We argue that the findings point to universal interactional motivations for the grammatical properties and the grammaticization of the constructions studied, and suggest that these motivations arise out of the basic requirements for intersubjectivity in social interaction.
ISSN:0378-2166
1879-1387
DOI:10.1016/j.pragma.2016.09.003