Arrondissement Gent, Bélgica
This paper focuses on the West Flemish discourse markers located at the edge of the clause. After a brief survey of the distribution of discourse markers in WF, the paper proposes a syntactic analysis of the discourse markers né and wè. Based on the distribution of these discourse markers, of vocatives and of dislocated DPs, an articulated speech act layer is elaborated which corroborates the proposals in Hill (2007b). It is postulated that there is a syntactic relation between particles used as discourse markers and vocatives. The paper offers further support for the grammaticalization of pragmatic features at the interface between syntax and discourse and for the hypothesis that the relevant computation at the interface is of the same nature as that in Narrow Syntax.