Eliciting exclamatives

Author : Natalia Zevakhina

Publication date : 2014

Bibliographical references :

Zevakhina, Natalia. 2012. The syntax of exclamative constructions. Ph.D. Dissertation, Moscow State University. Translated into English by Marina Rakhilin.

Goals

"The other goal is to answer two questions: which pronouns are used in exclamatives with gradable adjectives and adverbs and whether the latter might be elided. Moreover, the questionnaire enables us to investigate word order in assertives, unsubordinated and subordinated exclamatives and interrogatives. For that, all the possible word order variations of all sentences have to be probed. Though the main scope of the questionnaire includes languages with wh-strategy of exclamatives forming, it can also reveal other strategies, in particular noun phrases with and without relative clauses, nominalizations, wh-strategy with relative clauses, subject-verb inversion, anaphoric such- strategy (changing wh-pronouns into such-pronouns), and some others." (Zevakhina, 2014: 1)

Protocol summary

''The questionnaire contains [80] sentences to translate into a particular language. The sentences are accompanied by relevant contexts in brackets {} that needn’t to be translated. [...] {A/B/C} means mutually exclusive alternatives that should be tried one by one. Words in brackets () are optional. It is recommended to try without them and with them.'' (Zevakhina, 2014: 1)

Development context

This questionnaire is based on a previous questionnaire made by Natalia Zevakhina, for her Ph.D Dissertation (2012), The syntax of exclamative constructions. The author "tried to construct exclamatives so that they express the emotion of surprise that [she] find[s] the most important for exclamatives research". (Zevakhina, 2014: 1)