this paper was partially supported by NIH Grant # F32 MH65020-A1

Parentheticals and the inherent dialogicity of utterances The term ‘parenthetical ’ is applied to phenomena ranging from words over phrases to clauses and sentences, (1), which share but one common feature – being used ‘parenthetically’: (1) a. $1 000 000 — это, конечно, не подарок. (NKRJa, 10-5-2007) b. В школьные годы- в классе пятом-шестом- недолго занимался

This article presents evidence that individual words and phrases can contribute multiple independent pieces of meaning simultaneously. Such multidimensionality is a unifying theme of the literature on conventional implicatures and expressives. I use phenomena from discourse, semantic composition, and morphosyntax to detect and explore various dimensions of meaning. I also argue that, while the meanings involved are semantically independent, they interact pragmatically to reduce underspecification and fuel pragmatic enrichment. In this article, the central case studies are appositives like Falk, the CEO, and the taboo intensive damn, though discourse particles and connectives like but, even, and still play supporting roles. The primary evidence, both quantitative and qualitative, is drawn from large interview and product-review corpora, which harbor a wealth of information about the importance of these items to discourse.

In this paper we propose a truth-conditional account for the uncommon kind of reference and coherence involved in French reportive comme clauses (RCCs). We show that on the one hand these constructions are fairly similar to “standard ” parenthetical clauses, and that on the other hand they feature a specific behaviour which can be accounted for by relating them to the French comparative comme-constructions. We will exploit and extend the notion of speech acts as integrated in the SDRT framework. 1 Data on French reportive comme-clauses Among the paradigm of French comme constructions, the reportive 1 comme clauses (RCCs) are means to report—or quote—utterances, talk, words, etc., in an indirect fashion. Some examples are given in (1) where the RCCs are underlined. (1) a. Le chômage a augmenté, comme l’avait prévu Le Monde. “Unemployment rose, as Le Monde predicted.”