Parenthetical Meaning

• Applicant: Dr. Todor Koev
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: from 2018 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 393470929

This project will study the semantic and pragmatic properties of parenthetical expressions. In particular, the project will investigate (i) the scopal properties of parentheticals, i.e. the ways parentheticals interact with operators like negation and modals; (ii) the information status of parenthetical meaning, especially when compared to the regular assertion of the sentence; and (iii) the potential role of parentheticals as speech act modifiers. The main goal of the project is to argue that parentheticals parenthetical expressions constitute an independent speech act, one that is separate and can differ in type from the speech act performed by the remaining sentence.

• DFG Programme: Independent Junior Research Groups