Book reviews /Journal of Pragmatics 25 (1996) 281-302 293

References

Brandt, Per Aage, 1992. La Charpente modale du sens. Pour une sEmiolinguistique morphogrnEtique et
dynamique. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press and Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Brandt, Per Aage, 1994. Dynamiques du sens. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press,
Brandt, Per Aage, 1995. Morphologies of meaning. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.
Greimas, A.-J., 1983. Pour une thEorie des modalitEs. In: Du sens II, 57-102. Paris: Editions du Seuil.
Lakoff, George, 1987. Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Lewis, David, 1975. Causation. In: E. Sosa, ed., 1975, 180-191.
Petitot, Jean, 1985. Morphogen~se du sens. Pour un schEmatisme de la structure. Paris: Presses Univer-
sitaires de France.
Petitot, Jean, 1989a. ElEments de dynamique modale. Poetica et Analytica 6: 44-79. Aarhus: Aarhus
University Press.
Petitot, Jean, 1989b. ModUles morphodynamiques pour la grammaire cognitive et la sEmiotique modale.
Recherches sEmiotiques/Semiotic Inquiry 9(1-3): 17-51. Montreal: Canadian Semiotic Association.
Sosa, E., ed., 1975. Causation and conditionals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sweetser, Eve E., 1982. Root and epistemic modals: Causality in two worlds. In: M. Macauley and O.
Gensler, eds., Proceedings of the eighth annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 484-507.
Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Linguistics Society.
Talmy, Leonard, 1981. Force dynamics. Paper presented at the conference on Language and Mental
Imagery, May 1981, University of Calitomia at Berkeley.
Talmy, Leonard, 1988. Force dynamics in language and cognition. Cognitive Science 2: 49-100.
von Wright, Georg H., 1975. On the logic and epistemology of the causal relation. In: E. Sosa, ed., 1975,
95-113.

H e n k Haverkate, Kees Hengeveid and Gijs M u l d e r , eds., Aproximaciones

pragmalingtifsticas al espafiol (Difilogos hispfinicos, 12). A m s t e r d a m and Atlanta:
Rodopi, 1993. 219 pp.

Reviewed by Victoria Escandell-Vidal, Departamento de L e n g u a Espafiola, Univer-

sidad Nacional de Educaci6n a Distancia, Senda del Rey s/n, E-28040 Madrid.

In N o v e m b e r 1992, the Department o f Spanish Studies of the University of

Amsterdam organized a round table under the heading 'Pragmalinguistic
Approaches to Spanish'. Five of the six contributions now collected were presented
at this meeting, which was followed by a general debate, also partially transcribed at
the end of the book. With the analysis of Spanish p h e n o m e n a as the c o m m o n
denominator, the papers included in this volume explore a wide range o f topics: dis-
course operators and connectives (Garrido), uses of echoic questions (Dumitrescu),
the contrast between pronominal and empty subject in a pro-drop language (Martin
Rojo and Meeuwis), pragmatic uses of non-standard conditionals (Montolfo),
expressive and commissive speech acts (Haverkate), and the notion of indirectness
(Mulder).
The volume starts with Joaqufn Garrido's paper, 'Operadores epistrmicos y
conectores textuales' ('Epistemic operators and textual connectives'). The author
focuses on the forms incluso ( ' e v e n ' ) , todavfa (,'still', 'yet'), and ya ('already').
294 Book reviews / Journal of Pragmatics 25 (1996) 281-302

After a critical discussion of some previous accounts, he argues for a treatment of

incluso roughly in the spirit of Blakemore (1987), i.e., as a unit which restricts the
context of interpretation. In this way, incluso can be seen as encoding an instruction
for introducing a particular piece of information in the context of interpretation and,
at the same time, for rejecting this information. An explanation for todavfa and ya,
and their German and Dutch counterparts, is suggested along the same lines.
Perhaps the label textual connectives used by Garrido to refer to these items is
somewhat misleading, in the sense that it can (wrongly) suggest that two actual
pieces of explicit information are connected; however, this is not Garrido's claim:
for him, it is not necessary that the information used in the interpretation has been
made explicit before, but only that it can be retrieved or constructed at the moment
of the interpretation. There is no need either for postulating any kind of preexisting
argumentative or pragmatic scales, as Ducrot (1972) and Fauconnier (1975) have
suggested. Lexical units are only assumed to have simple, constant meanings.
Because the contribution of such items is constant and non-inferential, the analysis
of them becomes a matter of semantics, not of pragmatics.
An account d la B l a k e m o r e is thus preferred to other kinds of pragmatic explana-
tions, and even to a classical Gricean account as a conventional implicature. In fact,
the whole proposal has a clear relevance-theoretic flavor, and could be easily
restated in terms of Wilson and Sperber's (1993) distinction between conceptual and
procedural information: items encoding procedural meaning do not refer to con-
cepts, but transmit instructions on the management of information. The idea that
these connectives induce the recovering or the introduction of an assumption which
is subsequently rejected, could also be consistently captured under Sperber and
Wilson's (1986) notion of echoic utterance, and it could explain why the utterances
containing these connectives always reflect a dissociated attitude to an assumption.
The article by Domnita Dumitrescu, 'Funci6n pragma-discursiva de la interro-
gaci6n ecoica usada como respuesta en espafiol' ('Pragmalinguistic functions of
echoic interrogatives used as replies in Spanish'), is the only contribution in the vol-
ume that was not presented at the round table. For the author, the class of echoic
interrogatives includes all syntactically interrogative sentences that repeat some seg-
ment of an interlocutor's previous interrogation, totally or in part (notice that
Bolinger's (1957) 'ditto' questions would not fall under this category). Echoic inter-
rogatives are therefore always used as replies to a preceding discourse, and can serve
as dialogue controllers or as attitudinal expressions. Dumitrescu establishes a com-
plex taxonomy of uses (not always easy to follow) according to syntactic and
prosodic properties of sentences, and tries to establish a direct relationship between
linguistic form and pragmatic function; in this sense, her analysis is related to the
search for illocutionary markers.
Differences in intonational patterns are, in fact, crucial to the right interpretation
of utterances, and have usually been unattended in mainstream pragmatic research,
which has given priority to the logical properties of propositional forms, neglecting
the role of suprasegmental features in interpretation. At least in the case of interrog-
atives, the same would be necessary for the role of negation, or of (positive and neg-
ative) polarity items. Another interesting aspect in the functioning of echoic inter-
 Book reviews / Journal of Pragmatics 25 (1996) 281-302 295

rogatives is the fact that they are, to a large extent, attitudinal utterances: for
instance, echoic rhetorical questions are used to reject some assumption 'hidden' in
the partner's previous discourse; so this kind of utterance could be said to be echoic
also in Sperber and Wilson's sense (i.e., as the interpretation of someone's thoughts).
In fact, Blakemore's (1994) approach to echo questions from a relevance-theoretic
perspective is built on the idea that these are always representations of other utter-
ances which question either the words actually used, or the thoughts communicated.
Again, the assumptions attributed to the other reveal themselves as a determining
factor in the dynamics of interaction.
The contribution by Luisa Martin Rojo and Michael Meeuwis, 'Referentes del
sujeto pronominales y t~icitos en la conversaci6n en espafiol: un enfoque pragm~itico'
('Pronominal and null subject referents in Spanish conversation: A pragmatic
approach'), tries to offer a pragmatic explanation for a typically syntactic phenome-
non. As it is well known, Spanish is a so-called pro-drop language, i.e., a language
that allows the existence of subjects without overt phonological realization; such a
possibility is usually related to a rich verbal agreement morphology. The subject can
be thus realized as an overt noun phrase, as a pronoun, or as an empty category.
These three possibilites are not, of course, fully equivalent, and the differences
between them must be explained. After a theoretical introduction, Martin Rojo and
Meeuwis claim that the full range of differences between the explicit and the null
pronoun can be adequately accounted for from a pragmatic perspective. Using a cor-
pus of spoken conversation as a source for their data, they offer a proposal in which
notions such as topic/comment distinction, face management, turn taking, and polite-
ness play an important role.
The analysis of the examples is descriptively correct; however, the approach sug-
gested can raise some controversial issues. A large number of linguists would main-
tain that topic and comment are, in fact, at the interface between syntax and prag-
matics, and that most of their formal manifestations (including word order,
obligatory stress, use of certain units, etc . . . . ) are indeed a matter of grammar. In
other words, there are many cases in which syntax does not allow any choice
between a structure with or without the overt pronoun, but where only one of the two
possibilities is available. These cases require a strictly syntactic explanation, as Fer-
nandez Soriano (1990) has argued also on Spanish data. In addition, it seems that the
constraints on the presence of the pronoun in the subject position also govern clitic
doubling in the object position, so in these cases a common explanation is called for.
Perhaps it would have been better to draw a clearer distinction between syntactic
restrictions and real pragmatic strategies.
Estrella Montolio's paper ' " S i me lo permiten ...". Gram~itica y pragm~itica:
sobre algunas estructuras condicionales regulativas en espafiol' (' " I f I'm allowed
..." Grammar and pragmatics: On some regulative conditionals in Spanish') studies
conditionals that do not obey the logical laws for (material implication. The author
analyzes examples of so-called indirect conditionals, such as Si quiere que le diga la
verdad ... ('[If you want me] To tell you the truth . . . . ), Si no te importa . . . . ('If you
don't mind . . . . '), and Si no me equivoco . . . . ('If I'm right . . . . '), whose main func-
tion in discourse is characterized as regulative (in the sense of Caron, 1983); they
296 Book reviews /Journal of Pragmatics 25 (1996) 281-302

can serve as repairs and also as contextualization cues. A different explanation in rel-
evance-theoretic terms is also suggested, according to which the conditional clause
provides the speaker with a piece of information that is necessary to adequately
process the other clause, i.e., it both indicates which aspect is related to the situation
or to the previous discourse, and reduces the processing effort. The central meaning
of the non-standard if-clause is "suppose p, for q to be processed with a guarantee of
success".
Although she claims that she ultimately wants to account for conditionals from the
perspective of relevance theory, the author constantly invokes notions from different
approaches, such as face-saving strategies, or discourse control mechanisms. The
generalization suggested to explain the meaning of regulative conditionals seems to
require a less vague formulation. Perhaps if a more restricted framework had been
used, a more precise explanation would have been reached. For example, according
to recent developments in relevance theory (Wilson and Sperber, 1993), non-stan-
dard conditionals can be seen as contributing to the interpretation of the utterance
not by affecting or modifying its truth-value, but by imposing further restrictions on
the construction of higher-level explicatures.
The paper by Henk Haverkate, 'Acerca de los actos de habla expresivos y comi-
sivos en espafiol' ('On expressive and commissive speech acts in Spanish'), offers a
characterization of two types of speech acts (according to Searle's classification),
one of which, commissives, has been rather neglected in current pragmatics:
research has especially focused upon directives, and only to a lesser extent upon
assertives. Expressives transmit a psychological state which can be relevant to the
hearer, and include greetings, compliments, apologies, and acknowledgements.
Commissives are represented by promises and invitations, and convey the intention
of doing an action for the bearer's benefit.
From a communicative point of view, expressive speech-acts are supposed to have
very limited cognitive value, since their content only reflects a manifest change;
however, its role in communication is not to be related to the transmission of factual
information, but to the strengthening of social relationships, by reacting to a mani-
fest change. Expressives are, thus, linked to politeness. However, they contribute to
a 'polite' behavior in a special way: their role seems to be that of fulfilling social
expectations about interactional verbal behaviour. Only failing to produce an expres-
sive when required by the external situation gives rise to politeness-related implica-
tures, namely of communicative incompetence or of rudeness. If so, a deeper under-
standing of politeness phenomena and a more sophisticated theory of stereotyped
socio-cultural expectations will be needed in order to properly account both for the
role of expressives in a particular culture and for inter-cultural differences.
Commissives appear as a much less homogeneous class. Although they imply
social relations, their degree of institutionalization is different for each sub-class.
Promises have as a central, nuclear part the speaker's commitment to a future action,
while invitations only convey an intention; in other words, commitment is the con-
stitutive factor for a promise, but it is rather a sincerity condition for an invitation (as
it would also be in directive speech-acts). This explains, for example, why for many
cultures an insincere invitation can be socially acceptable, while an insincere or bro-
 Book reviews / Journal of Pragmatics 25 (1996) 281-302 297

ken promise is not. Moreover, it is clear that invitations play an important role in
interpersonal relations, but the same cannot be said about promises. The role of com-
missives in interactional strategies is therefore an aspect that deserves further inves-
tigation.
Gijs Mulder's contribution ' ~ Por qu~ no coges el tel~fono ?: acerca de los actos
de habla indirectos' ('Why don't you answer the phone?: On indirect speech acts')
is more theoretically-oriented; it addresses the general problem of indirectness. After
discussing some previous accounts, he analyses a number of examples of 'classical'
indirect speech-acts, metaphors, and irony, and concludes that they share a family
resemblance (in Wittgenstein's sense), although there is no specific set of properties
that could wholly characterize all the members. As Mulder says, also the notion of
directness needs some clarification. He suggests that an utterance is direct if it does
a single speech-act, and it is indirect if it simultaneously does more than one.
The adequate definition of indirectness, or even the discussion about whether
we actually need the concept of indirectness at all, is indeed a controversial issue
and has deep theoretical consequences for speech-act theory in particular, and for
pragmatics in general. Indirectness has been at least a useful departing point,
which has permitted the identification of a number of properties of utterances;
however, the strict correlation between sentence types and illocutionary forces can
no longer be maintained, and intercultural diversity seems to lead to a more rela-
tivistic position: cultural ethos and conventions play a crucial role in the under-
standing of 'indirect' utterances. The question, however, is still open and, as the
papers that recently appeared in Tsohatzidis (1994) show, an agreement is far from
being reached.
To sum up, the articles collected in this volume clearly show that the authors have
contributed to the general topic from different perspectives and from different theo-
retical backgrounds: Haverkate, Mulder and, only in part, Dumitrescu can be
roughly included in speech-act theory; Garrido and Montolio present their proposals
from a cognitive perspective related to Sperber and Wilson's relevance theory; and
Martin Rojo and Meeuwis make use of Verschueren's distinctions. These differences
both in the issues addressed and in the frameworks selected can serve as a good sam-
ple of the diversity in current Spanish research on pragmatics.

References

Blakemore, Diane, 1987. Semantic constraints on relevance. Oxford: Blackwell.

Blakemore, Diane, 1994. Echo questions: A pragmatic account. Lingua 94:197-211.
Bolinger, Dwight, 1957. Interrogative structures of American English. Alabama: University of Alabama
Press.
Caron, Jean, 1983. Les r6gulations du di~scours. Psycholinguistique et pragmatique du langage. Paris:
PUF.
Ducrot, Oswald, 1972. Dire et ne pas dire. Paris: Hermann.
Fauconnier, Gilles, 1975. Pragmatic scales and logical structure. Linguistic Inquiry 6: 353-376.
Fermindez Soriano, Olga, 1990. Strong pronouns in null subject languages and the 'avoid pronoun' prin-
ciple. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 11: 228-240.
Sperber, Dan and Deirdre Wilson, 1986. Relevance. Communication and cognition. Oxford: Blackwell.
298 Book reviews / Journal of Pragmatics 25 (1996) 281-302

Tsohatzidis, Savas L. (ed.), 1994. Foundations of speech act theory. Philosophical and linguistic per-
spectives. London: Routledge.
Wilson, Deirdre and Dan Sperber, 1993. Linguistic form and relevance. Lingua 90: 1-25.

Julio Calvo P6rez, Introducci6n a la pragm~itica del espafiol. Madrid: Ediciones

C~itedra, 1994. 286 pp.

Reviewed by Henk Haverkate, Department of Spanish, University of Amsterdam,

S puistraat 134, 1012 VB Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

It is a striking fact that in the past few years a relatively large number of intro-
ductions to linguistic pragmatics have been written in Spanish. Thus, the book of
Calvo P6rez (henceforth C.P.) can be considered the most recent one of a set which,
in chronological order, includes the following titles: Eduardo Bustos (1986) Prag-
m6tica del espahol: Negaci6n, cuantificaci6n y modo, Graciela Reyes (1990) La
pragm6tica lingiiistica, and M. Victoria Escandell Vidal (1993) lntroducci6n a la
pragm6tica. As suggested by the subtitle of the first book, the introductions referred
to above show differences with respect to their focuses of interest. The obvious
explanation for this is that mainstream pragmatic research is conducted within the
framework of a set of basically autonomous theories, the principal ones of which are
conversation analysis, speech act theory, the theory of Gricean maxims, politeness
theory, and relevance theory. For this reason, it is customary for authors writing an
introduction to pragmatics to provide a justification for the perspective from which
they approach their subject matter. One of the central problems involved here is that
of defining the scope of pragmatics. This point is extensively discussed in Levin-
son's well-known Pragmatics (1983). In the introductory chapter of this book, the
author points out that the wide variety of objects of research to which pragmaticists
devote their attention makes it impossible to adequately demarcate the boundaries of
the field. Nevertheless, there seems to be a general consensus concerning the fact
that the notion of context should play a keynote role in pragmatic theory. As for the
scope of context, Levinson quotes the following characterization by Ochs (1979:5):
"The scope of context is not easy to define ... one must consider the social and psy-
chological world in which the language user operates at any given time" (p. 1) ... "it
includes minimally, language users' beliefs and assumptions about temporal, spatial,
and social settings; prior, ongoing, and future actions (verbal, non-verbal), and the
state of knowledge and attentiveness of those participating in the social interaction
in hand".
Turning next to Introducci6n a la pragm6tica del espafTol, we find that C.P. also
assigns a crucial role to the concept of context, which he subcategorizes in the fol-
lowing way: 'natural context', 'social context', and 'individual context'. The two
latter terms are self-explanatory. The subcategory of 'natural context' is character-
ized in global terms only: "... el mundo como globalidad en que vivimos, donde
creamos y nos recreamos" (p. 28) ('... the world as a global entity in which we live,
in which we create and recreate ourselves'). The same lack of explicitness is inher-