Sentence-initial I think (that) and I believe (that)

Prosodic evidence for uses as main clause, comment clause and discourse marker

Dados Bibliográficos

ID5779865
AutoresNicole Dehé (0000-0002-2952-8592, Freie Universität Berlin), Anne Wichmann (0000-0003-0085-9782)
Ano2010
Volume34
Fascículo1
Páginas36-74
Data de publicação2010-03-19
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoStudies in Language (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0378-4177 • E-ISSN: 1569-9978
EditoraJohn Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1075/sl.34.1.02deh
OpenAlexW2039919650
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas41
Referências citadas18

Sentence-initial pronoun-verb combinations such as I think , I believe are ambiguous between main clause use on the one hand and adverbial or discourse use on the other hand. We approach the topic from a prosodic perspective. Based on corpus data from spoken British English the prosodic patterns of sentence-initial I think and I believe are analysed and related to their interpretation in context. We show that these expressions may function as main clause (MC), comment clause (CC) or discourse markers (DM) and that the speaker's choice is reflected in the prosody. The key feature is prosodic prominence: MCs are reflected by accent placement on the pronoun, CCs by an accent on the verb, while DMs are unstressed

Adverbial · Feature (linguistics · Stress · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation