The shared effects make the equation initially plausible, but they do not by themselves show that exclamatives and emotive assertions are st
The shared effects make the equation initially plausible, but they do not by themselves show that exclamatives and emotive assertions are structurally or functionally identical.
Paper reconstruction — Sebastian Bücking (2025), Empirical and theoretical arguments against equating exclamatives and emotive assertions
Trotzke and Giannakidou's target analysis equates exclamatives with emotive assertions, including a silent emotive-predicate structure, partly on their apparent shared surprise effects and question–answer behavior.
Trotzke and Giannakidou argue that exclamatives are emotive assertions.
Their proposal treats a root exclamative as equivalent both to a subordinate clause embedded under an emotive predicate and to a declarative exclamation.
Trotzke and Giannakidou’s uniform analysis is intended to avoid positing exclamatives as a distinct sentence type with its own illocutionary force.
The proposed equivalence is initially intuitively plausible because all of the illustrated structures convey speaker surprise at Ada’s speed.
Their broader assumption is that, under suitable discourse conditions, exclamatives can answer information-seeking questions.
As empirical support, Trotzke and Giannakidou argue that exclamatives pattern with emotive assertions in question–answer pairs.