TY - JOUR
T1 - Turn-peripheral management of Common Ground
T2 - A study of Swabian gell
AU - Heim, Johannes
N1 - This research was supported by the Arts Graduate Research Award (University of British Columbia, Faculty of Arts, ORS RPB 12R72682) awarded to the author. Further acknowledgments are due to Martina Wiltschko, Michael Rochemont, Carla Hudson Kam, Lisa Matthewson, and the Eh-lab members at the University of British Columbia, who provided insight and comments that greatly improved the manuscript. Thanks also to Elise McClay for proofreading the manuscript. Finally, I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their comments and corrections, which have greatly improved the manuscript. Any remaining errors are my own.
PY - 2019/2
Y1 - 2019/2
N2 - The present study investigates the function of the Swabian particle gell. This particle is employed to manage the Common Ground – either in a narrative or in a dialogical context. Focusing on the dialogical context, I show that gell has two intersubjective flavors: one is to request confirmation; the other is to demand it. Both flavors are available at the beginning and at the end of a turn. This is demonstrated by a quantitative analysis of the distributional behavior of the two flavors in two independent forced-choice response studies. Both flavors show an identical response pattern at both peripheries. This result is relevant for the question of whether the two turn peripheries have different discourse-functions. Under such an asymmetric perspective, turn-initial particles have a subjective meaning and turn-final particles have an intersubjective meaning (e.g. Beeching et al., 2009). Beyond a peripherally-independent meaning, the properties of gell suggest that the notion of intersubjectivity is best conceived as a matter of degree: gell has three different contexts of use, each instantiating a different degree of intersubjectivity.
AB - The present study investigates the function of the Swabian particle gell. This particle is employed to manage the Common Ground – either in a narrative or in a dialogical context. Focusing on the dialogical context, I show that gell has two intersubjective flavors: one is to request confirmation; the other is to demand it. Both flavors are available at the beginning and at the end of a turn. This is demonstrated by a quantitative analysis of the distributional behavior of the two flavors in two independent forced-choice response studies. Both flavors show an identical response pattern at both peripheries. This result is relevant for the question of whether the two turn peripheries have different discourse-functions. Under such an asymmetric perspective, turn-initial particles have a subjective meaning and turn-final particles have an intersubjective meaning (e.g. Beeching et al., 2009). Beyond a peripherally-independent meaning, the properties of gell suggest that the notion of intersubjectivity is best conceived as a matter of degree: gell has three different contexts of use, each instantiating a different degree of intersubjectivity.
U2 - 10.1016/j.pragma.2018.12.007
DO - 10.1016/j.pragma.2018.12.007
M3 - Article
SN - 0378-2166
VL - 141
SP - 109
EP - 129
JO - Journal of Pragmatics
JF - Journal of Pragmatics
ER -