B4

The main goal of B4 is the modeling of a more fine-grained typology of non-default common ground updates by studying mirativity in Romance, i.e., the linguistic encoding of new or unexpected information. Combining synchronic and diachronic corpus analyses with acceptability judgment experiments, we investigate the defining features of mirativity (RQ1) and the development of mirative markers as well as the cross-linguistic correlations between their formal source, the diachronic grammaticalization / pragmaticalization paths, and the specific mirative common ground updates that they trigger (RQ2), for which Romance languages provide an ideal comparative testbed.