Discourse marking and the subtle art of mind-reading: The case of Dutch eigenlijk

This article gives a unified semantic analysis of the various uses of the Dutch discourse marker eigenlijk. Eigenlijk is analyzed as involving implicit assumptions of the speaker about the hearer's expectations: by using eigenlijk, the speaker marks the plausibility of what s/he assumes the hearer to infer on the basis of their shared beliefs. Hence, the speaker not only recognizes the discrepancy between the speaker's and the hearer's perspective, but in addition, the speaker puts him/herself in the hearer's shoes. The claims are empirically supported by the results of a web experiment as well as by data from natural language.

► We give a unified semantic analysis of the various uses of the Dutch discourse marker eigenlijk. ► Eigenlijk involves implicit assumptions of the speaker about the hearer's expectations. ► eigenlijk marks the plausibility of what the speaker assumes the hearer to infer on the basis of their shared beliefs. ► By using eigenlijk, the speaker recognizes the discrepancy between the speaker's and the hearer's perspective, and puts him/herself in the hearer's shoes. ► Our claims are empirically supported by the results of a web experiment as well as by data from natural language.