Gutzmann, Daniel & Katharina Turgay. 2016. Normalexklamationen – Normal!. To appear in: Franz d'Avis & Horst Lohnstein (eds.): Normalität in der Sprache. Hamburg: Buske.
Abstract
This paper investigates a previously unstudied construction in German which we dub normal exclamatives. These are utterances in which a possibly reduced declarative is preceded or followed by the unintegrated adjective normal. This adjective does not target the propositional content of the utterance, but rather expresses the use-conditional speaker attitude that the assertion itself has to be considered as normal and expectable. We investigate the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties of normal exclamatives. In order to model their discourse effects we extend the common ground based model of assertion to represent the beliefs of the interlocutors about what is in the common ground, which enable the modeling of discrepancies in their perception of the common ground. The effect of normal exclamatives is then to align the beliefs of speaker and hearer regarding the common ground, thereby removing the discrepancies.