The grammar of interactives

Abstract

The concern of the book is with identifying a domain of discourse processing referred to as 'interactive grammar'. The book rests on the analysis of grammatical descriptions of well over one hundred languages spoken in all major regions of the world. Ten types of interactives, that is, extra-clausal expressions of linguistic discourse, are distinguished, namely attention signals, directives, discourse markers, evaluatives, ideophones, interjections, response elicitors, response signals, social formulae, and vocatives. The main message of the book is that speakers dispose of two contrasting modes for structuring their discourses. One mode, represented by sentence grammar, organized in a propositional format and having an analytic organization, focuses on conceptual communication about the world