Shapes of conversation and at-issue content

Hunter, Julie; Asher, Nicholas

Shapes of conversation and at-issue content

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Citation

Hunter J, Asher N. Shapes of conversation and at-issue content. In: Moroney M, Little CR, Collard J, Burgdorf D (eds). Proceedings of the 26th Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference; 2016 May 12-15; the University of Texas, Austin. Ithaca, NY: Linguistic Society of America; 2016. p. 1022-42. DOI 10.3765/salt.v26i0.3946.

Abstract

While not-at-issue (NAI) content is typically introduced via particular syntactic constructions, accounts of NAI content that only consider the syntax/semantics interface face empirical difficulties. We develop a new approach to NAI content that exploits features of discourse structure to solve these difficulties, and we provide some insight on the strategic uses of NAI constructions.