Sentence and clause are basic units of almost any grammatical theory, central to linguistic analysis and language description. However, surprisingly, the definition of this basic concept is vague and highly disputed. Moreover, natural data demonstrate numerous exceptions to this idea, as well as the relevance of intonation for the definition and identification of basic grammatical units. For example, everyday speech is abundant with sub-sentential utterances: Information is often conveyed through series of sub-sentential units. (“-Two coffees, please.” “-Sugar?” “-Yes. In both.”). Furthermore, many languages of the world (in particular East-Asian) employ stand-alone predicates as a full utterance (“Go” for “I went/He is going/She went…”). This course will survey some theoretical approaches to the concept of sentence and clause, and their relation to the concepts of speech act and utterance. We will examine the applicability of these ideas to typologically different languages and to natural conversation and will explore the alternatives proposed in the literature.
- Lehrende/r: Pavel Ozerov