Proper names such as Jan are typically used to address people, but the same is true for nouns indicating kinship or profession; cf. Section N18.1.2.2. The examples in (9) show that such vocatives do not have to precede the main clause, but can also follow it.

There is no immediate reason to assume that vocatives are syntactically connected to the main clause, since they can also be used as independent utterances, e.g. when they are used to call someone: Jan! That vocatives are not part of the main clause is also clear from the fact that they cannot bind reflexive pronouns, which must have an antecedent within their minimal clause.

In this respect they are similar to salutations (hoihi), interjections (hé!hey!) and hesitation markers (eher), which can also be used as independent utterances. Note, however, that there is a word-order restriction on interjections and vocatives in that the former must precede the latter. It is not clear whether this shows that vocatives are more closely related to the following main clause, as the independent uses of Hé, Jan! and Eh, Jan? exhibit a similar word-order restriction.

It is not always the case that vocatives are closest to the following main clause; the examples in (12) show that they can be preceded or followed by phrases such as zeg/kijk (eens), which are also used to attract attention.

Note, however, that the structure of the examples in (12) is not very clear. First, zeg/kijk (eens) seems to be a regular imperative clause, which is clear from the fact that at least kijk (eens) can also be used as an independent utterance: this suggests that we might be dealing with two juxtaposed clauses. If this is the case, the vocatives in the primed examples could belong to the imperative, as is also suggested by the acceptability of Jan, kijk eens! Therefore, it is not so obvious that the primed examples actually show that vocatives can be separated from their associate main clauses by other main-clause external elements. The primeless examples are potentially ambiguous for the same reason, as the vocatives can be construed either with the preceding imperative or with the following interrogative/declarative clause.

The discussion above has shown that elements used for addressing and drawing attention can often be used independently. Despite the orthographic convention of using a comma, we might therefore be dealing with separate utterances or, alternatively, with some sort of juxtaposition.

One of the prototypical functions of main-clause external pragmatic markers is to help organize the discourse by referring to a previous statement or a state of affairs. Diewald (2009) distinguishes between two different types, called text-connective and discourse markers, respectively.

The polar elements jayes and neeno are prototypically used as answers to yes/no questions. This is illustrated by the (a)-examples in (20): the polar elements indicate whether the open proposition expressed by the question is applicable to the domain or not. However, such polar phrases can also be used to affirm or contradict propositions given earlier in the discourse: the (b)-examples provide an instance in which the affirmation/contradiction is consciously elicited by the first speaker through the discourse marker toch. The polar phrases ja/nee in (20) can be used as independent utterances, but they can also be followed by a clause expressing the propositional content of the response in full.

It is not easy to determine the precise semantic contribution of ja and nee in examples like (20). It seems too simple to say that ja expresses confirmation and nee expresses denial of some presupposition held by the speaker. This is evident from the fact that the negative counterparts of the examples in (20a&b), which suggest the opposite presuppositions, can evoke exactly the same responses. We ignore the fact that jawel may be preferred to ja in (21b'); we return to this in our discussion of (26).

The fact that the main clauses in the primed examples above can be omitted without a clear change in meaning suggests that ja and nee are in some sense shorthand for the positive and negative clauses that follow them. One way to formally account for this is to say that these clauses are syntactically present but elided when these polar elements are used independently; cf. Van Craenenbroeck (2010: §15) for a related discussion. There are other reasons for this assumption. First, the examples in (22) show that polar ja and nee can easily be coordinated with full main clauses; this would follow if the polar elements were followed by phonetically empty main clauses.

Second, polar ja and nee can also be combined with a non-main clause, as shown by the answers to the question in (23a); this would again follow if they were followed by phonetically empty main clauses.

Third, if we are indeed dealing with ellipsis, we would expect it to be subject to the recoverability condition on deletion: elements that cannot be recovered from the context must be overtly expressed. The examples in (24) suggest that this is indeed the case; cf. Pope (1971) for a larger sample of English examples. Note in passing that there is little or no reason to assume that waarschijnlijk morgen and natuurlijk niet are constituents, which lends even greater credibility to the ellipsis analysis.

Note that the overtly expressed remnant of the elided clause need not be a clausal constituent. The second sentence in (25a) shows that it can also be a complementizer: as the close paraphrase in (25b) shows, polar ja corresponds to the italicized part of the conditional clause introduced by the complementizer indienif.

Finally, the ellipsis approach may also explain why the preferred answer to the negative question in (26a') is jawel, because denying a negative proposition usually favors the presence of the affirmative marker wel. Since contradicting a negative presupposition also favors the presence of wel, the ellipsis approach would also explain the use of jawel in (26b').

The above discussion has shown that polar ja and nee are not primarily used to affirm or to deny a presupposition, but in a sense “agree” with a (possibly elided) positive or negative clause following it. This makes it understandable that these elements can also be used in contexts like (27), where the hearer simply accepts the truth of the (negative/positive) propositions dat wist ik al/niet in the primeless examples.

Our brief (and incomplete) discussion of the use of the polar elements jayes and neeno shows that they have the hallmark of pragmatic markers in that they carry no truth-conditional content: they simply indicate that the (possibly phonetically empty) clauses with which they are associated are positive or negative. In this respect they differ from the polar elements welles and nietes in (28), which are typically used to contradict or refute a proposition in the immediately preceding discourse.

Like polar ja and nee, welles and nietes seem to have the status of a full clause: this is clear from the fact, illustrated in the mini-dialogue in (28), that they can be in a coordinate structure with another clause. However, it is not clear whether these elements are associated with an elided clause, as this clause cannot be made explicit. Furthermore, the examples in (29) show that it is not possible to combine these elements with embedded clauses. Note that welles and nietes also differ in this respect from the affirmative marker wel and the negative adverb nietnot in the two mini-dialogues in (29); this is not surprising, since we are probably dealing with reduced clauses here: Jij komt wel/niet you will/wonʼt.

The discussion above has shown that the polar elements ja and nee are pragmatic markers: they have no truth-conditional content. We also noted that this is less clear in the case of the polar elements welles and nietes.

Discourse particles are sometimes said to express the speaker’s emotional attitude toward some aspect of the discourse. For example, curses can be used to indicate how the speaker feels about a certain state of affairs, as in (30a), or a certain behavior of the addressee, as in (30b).

Many pragmatic markers seem to have an additional emotional value. In response to a question such as Kom je morgen? in (31a), answers like Natuurlijk!Of course! and VanzelfsprekendObviously! also have a certain emotional charge, in addition to expressing mere confirmation. It should be noted, however, that the same emotional charge is present in sentences such as Natuurlijk kom ik morgenOf course I will come tomorrow, which can also be used as an answer to this question. If the discourse particle natuurlijk is analyzed as a reduced clause, its emotional charge would of course not be surprising. A similar analysis can be made for speaker-oriented adverbs such as helaas in (31b).

This suggests that emotional involvement is a lexical property of certain particles (or adverbs in the case of ellipsis) rather than of particle constructions per se.

This section has discussed the use of a number of main-clause external pragmatic markers that have received much attention in the pragmatic literature, especially since Schiffrin (1987). These markers are characterized by the fact that they often do not have a clear truth-conditional content, but instead perform a wide range of pragmatic functions; they are indexical in the sense that they refer to some aspect of the discourse: discourse participants, state of affairs at speech time, previous statements, etc. Discourse markers can take different forms: they can be simple sounds like mmm, mhm and ooo, lexical elements such as the interjection hé, phrasal expressions such as mijn godmy god, or (reduced) conventional stock clauses such as Ik bedoelI mean. Furthermore, we have seen that certain pragmatic markers, like the polar elements ja and nee, can be inherently associated with a (potentially elided) main clause. Other putative pragmatic markers can be part of partially elided clauses, e.g. Dat is goed: ik kom morgen O.K., I will come tomorrow (in which case an analysis as a clausal constituent is of course more likely than as a particle). The above examples suggest that many pragmatic markers have emerged as a result of grammaticalization; this also seems to hold for a number of markers that can also be used as adverbial phrases, such as helaasunfortunately. As a result, we find cases like dusso and tochall the same with a less clear status; cf. Aijmer (2002) and Diewald (2009) on grammaticalization, and Evers-Vermeul (2005/2010) and Degand (2011) for specific case studies in Dutch. Since pragmatic markers are characteristic of discourse and thus not part of core syntax, we will not digress further here.