The article presents a description of request for confirmation (RfC) sequences in everyday conversation in Egyptian Arabic. Through a quantitative analysis of 200 sequences excerpted from telephone calls, the analysis is concerned to identify the main design features of RfC sequences and their context-sensitive distribution and use. Analysis reveals that RfCs in Egyptian Arabic often do not bear special syntactic or prosodic marking. Lexical devices, such as inference markers, tag questions, and modulation markers, make explicit the specific epistemic position of the requesters. RfCs mostly attract confirmations. These can be accomplished by minimal responses; however, in most cases, a more elaborate format is used. Greater epistemic independence is suggested in confirmations in which no token is used. Non-minimal responses seem to be normative in the case of disconfirmations. Responders can also employ dedicated means for declining to provide a dis/confirmation. The findings of this study support the view of RfC sequences as a complex site for the display and negotiation of knowledge and social positioning.
{"title":"Request for confirmation sequences in Egyptian Arabic","authors":"Michal Marmorstein","doi":"10.1515/opli-2024-0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2024-0009","url":null,"abstract":"The article presents a description of request for confirmation (RfC) sequences in everyday conversation in Egyptian Arabic. Through a quantitative analysis of 200 sequences excerpted from telephone calls, the analysis is concerned to identify the main design features of RfC sequences and their context-sensitive distribution and use. Analysis reveals that RfCs in Egyptian Arabic often do not bear special syntactic or prosodic marking. Lexical devices, such as inference markers, tag questions, and modulation markers, make explicit the specific epistemic position of the requesters. RfCs mostly attract confirmations. These can be accomplished by minimal responses; however, in most cases, a more elaborate format is used. Greater epistemic independence is suggested in confirmations in which no token is used. Non-minimal responses seem to be normative in the case of disconfirmations. Responders can also employ dedicated means for declining to provide a dis/confirmation. The findings of this study support the view of RfC sequences as a complex site for the display and negotiation of knowledge and social positioning.","PeriodicalId":43803,"journal":{"name":"Open Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142199599","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Tiit Hennoste, Andriela Rääbis, Kirsi Laanesoo-Kalk, Andra Rumm
The aim of the article is to analyze the calls to the Estonian Emergency Response Centre, focusing on instances where callers reduce the severity of incident or emergency in their first turn. The data comprise 39 calls from the Corpus of Emergency Calls of the University of Tartu. The analysis reveals that callers employ mitigating words and negative turn-initial utterances to reduce the severity. These words indicate the caller’s uncertainty about the information provided or suggest that the reported incident or emergency is minor. The utterances are syntactically and semantically (but not prosodically) completed clauses followed by a second part of the clause construction containing specific information about the caller’s issue. Functionally, these utterances serve as assessments falling into three groups based on the information they project. Some assessments project uncertain information, explicitly expressing uncertainty about the information or using the epistemic marker ma=i=tea ‘I don’t know’. The second group of assessments project information about an incident that the caller does not qualify as an emergency. The last group projects a potential incident or emergency using variants of the utterance ei juhtund midagi ‘nothing happened’. In addition, we offer explanations for why callers reduce the severity of the incident or emergency and demonstrate that reducing severity does not lower the probability of sending assistance. This indicates that call-takers do not rely on callers’ assessments when deciding whether the help is needed.
文章旨在分析爱沙尼亚紧急响应中心的呼叫，重点关注呼叫者在第一次呼叫时降低事件或紧急情况严重程度的情况。数据包括塔尔图大学紧急呼叫语料库中的 39 个呼叫。分析结果表明，呼叫者会使用减轻语气的词语和消极的回合开头语来减轻事件的严重性。这些词语表示来电者对所提供信息的不确定性，或暗示所报告的事件或紧急情况并不严重。这些语句在句法和语义上（而不是在韵律上）都是完整的分句，其后是分句结构的第二部分，包含有关来电者问题的具体信息。从功能上讲，这些语篇可作为评估，根据其预测的信息可分为三类。有些评估语预测了不确定的信息，明确表达了对信息的不确定性，或使用了认识标记 ma=i=tea "我不知道"。第二类评估预测的是来电者认为不属于紧急情况的事件信息。最后一组是使用语句 ei juhtund midagi'什么也没发生'的变体来预测潜在的事件或紧急情况。此外，我们还解释了为什么呼叫者会降低事件或紧急情况的严重性，并证明降低严重性并不会降低提供援助的概率。这表明，呼叫者在决定是否需要帮助时并不依赖于呼叫者的评估。
{"title":"Reducing the severity of incidents or emergency in Estonian emergency calls","authors":"Tiit Hennoste, Andriela Rääbis, Kirsi Laanesoo-Kalk, Andra Rumm","doi":"10.1515/opli-2024-0022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2024-0022","url":null,"abstract":"The aim of the article is to analyze the calls to the Estonian Emergency Response Centre, focusing on instances where callers reduce the severity of incident or emergency in their first turn. The data comprise 39 calls from the Corpus of Emergency Calls of the University of Tartu. The analysis reveals that callers employ mitigating words and negative turn-initial utterances to reduce the severity. These words indicate the caller’s uncertainty about the information provided or suggest that the reported incident or emergency is minor. The utterances are syntactically and semantically (but not prosodically) completed clauses followed by a second part of the clause construction containing specific information about the caller’s issue. Functionally, these utterances serve as assessments falling into three groups based on the information they project. Some assessments project uncertain information, explicitly expressing uncertainty about the information or using the epistemic marker <jats:italic>ma=i=tea</jats:italic> ‘I don’t know’. The second group of assessments project information about an incident that the caller does not qualify as an emergency. The last group projects a potential incident or emergency using variants of the utterance <jats:italic>ei juhtund midagi</jats:italic> ‘nothing happened’. In addition, we offer explanations for why callers reduce the severity of the incident or emergency and demonstrate that reducing severity does not lower the probability of sending assistance. This indicates that call-takers do not rely on callers’ assessments when deciding whether the help is needed.","PeriodicalId":43803,"journal":{"name":"Open Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142199598","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines request for confirmation (RfC) sequences in Low German (LoG) conversation, a dialect variety of German. The study is based on both a quantitative analysis of 200 RfC instances and a qualitative analysis of selected excerpts in the framework of conversation analysis (CA). As for the question design of RfCs, declarative and phrasal formats, as well as modulations and tags prevail in the LoG data. Concerning the response design, LoG is characterized as a polarity system in which language contact with the high variety plays a decisive role in the answer possibility space. In particular, High German response tokens are predominantly used as unmarked response types, while LoG response tokens are deployed as marked types. Moreover, LoG seems to be a language between the poles of token- and repeat-type languages. Full repeats index different degrees of ‘markedness’ in LoG interaction. Contrary to previous studies on polar answers, repeats in LoG are frequently deployed as unmarked responses in subordinate lines of actions. Repeats are also used as more marked answers after understanding displays. This article attempts to stress the importance of investigating non-standard languages and variety contact in CA, thereby addressing the monolingual bias in research on polar questions.
{"title":"Request for confirmation sequences in Low German","authors":"Kathrin Weber","doi":"10.1515/opli-2024-0019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2024-0019","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines request for confirmation (RfC) sequences in Low German (LoG) conversation, a dialect variety of German. The study is based on both a quantitative analysis of 200 RfC instances and a qualitative analysis of selected excerpts in the framework of conversation analysis (CA). As for the question design of RfCs, declarative and phrasal formats, as well as modulations and tags prevail in the LoG data. Concerning the response design, LoG is characterized as a polarity system in which language contact with the high variety plays a decisive role in the answer possibility space. In particular, High German response tokens are predominantly used as unmarked response types, while LoG response tokens are deployed as marked types. Moreover, LoG seems to be a language between the poles of token- and repeat-type languages. Full repeats index different degrees of ‘markedness’ in LoG interaction. Contrary to previous studies on polar answers, repeats in LoG are frequently deployed as unmarked responses in subordinate lines of actions. Repeats are also used as more marked answers after understanding displays. This article attempts to stress the importance of investigating non-standard languages and variety contact in CA, thereby addressing the monolingual bias in research on polar questions.","PeriodicalId":43803,"journal":{"name":"Open Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142199600","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Kamal Abdullayev, Azad Mammadov, Misgar Mammadov, Shaban Huseynov
Despite the fact that various functions of repetition in discourse have been studied, we have decided to continue our exploration of the role of phonetic and lexical repetitions in the pragmatics and cognition of text and discourse focusing our attention on the epic texts and modern literary discourses across languages. The reason why we have decided to analyze both epic texts and modern literary discourses across languages is our intention to reveal the pragmatic nature of intersubjective behaviors regardless of time and place. In addition, phonetic and lexical repetitions play a crucial role in the cognition of these texts and discourses as they cause associations by stimulating knowledge in the human mind. Thus, our article’s goal is to analyze the ways why and how the sender uses these very important explicit linguistic devices to produce pragmatic and cognitive effects on the audience of the epic texts, as well as on the participants of modern fictional discourses in English, Azerbaijani, and Russian. Throughout the history, phonetic and lexical repetitions have gradually become key devices in producing pragmatic and cognitive effects in literary discourses across languages. The examples from Beowulf, The Book of Dede Korkut, as well as from modern fictional and poetic discourses in Azerbaijani and English clearly demonstrate this trend. We can draw a conclusion that as human’s life experience and his/her intellectual level gradually develops, the functions of these repetitions in discourse expand and gain a new meaning. Repetition is a choice made by the sender of any text, first of all, based on his/her subjective individual rather than social preferences. That is why the use of repetition in discourse motivates intersubjective behaviors regardless of time and place.
{"title":"Repetition in discourses across languages and genres","authors":"Kamal Abdullayev, Azad Mammadov, Misgar Mammadov, Shaban Huseynov","doi":"10.1515/opli-2024-0020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2024-0020","url":null,"abstract":"Despite the fact that various functions of repetition in discourse have been studied, we have decided to continue our exploration of the role of phonetic and lexical repetitions in the pragmatics and cognition of text and discourse focusing our attention on the epic texts and modern literary discourses across languages. The reason why we have decided to analyze both epic texts and modern literary discourses across languages is our intention to reveal the pragmatic nature of intersubjective behaviors regardless of time and place. In addition, phonetic and lexical repetitions play a crucial role in the cognition of these texts and discourses as they cause associations by stimulating knowledge in the human mind. Thus, our article’s goal is to analyze the ways why and how the sender uses these very important explicit linguistic devices to produce pragmatic and cognitive effects on the audience of the epic texts, as well as on the participants of modern fictional discourses in English, Azerbaijani, and Russian. Throughout the history, phonetic and lexical repetitions have gradually become key devices in producing pragmatic and cognitive effects in literary discourses across languages. The examples from <jats:italic>Beowulf</jats:italic>, <jats:italic>The Book of Dede Korkut</jats:italic>, as well as from modern fictional and poetic discourses in Azerbaijani and English clearly demonstrate this trend. We can draw a conclusion that as human’s life experience and his/her intellectual level gradually develops, the functions of these repetitions in discourse expand and gain a new meaning. Repetition is a choice made by the sender of any text, first of all, based on his/her subjective individual rather than social preferences. That is why the use of repetition in discourse motivates intersubjective behaviors regardless of time and place.","PeriodicalId":43803,"journal":{"name":"Open Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142199605","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Arnulf Deppermann, Alexandra Gubina, Katharina König, Martin Pfeiffer
In request for confirmation (RfC) sequences, interlocutors negotiate their social positions regarding access and rights to knowledge. The article presents an overview of a quantitative analysis of 200 RfCs and their responses in German conversations to highlight the relevant linguistic resources speakers of the language deployed to position themselves vis-à-vis a confirmable proposition. In German RfCs, modal particles and tags play an important role in expressing the requester’s epistemic stance; explicit inference marking is used less frequently. Responses usually include response tokens (among others doch as a token specialized for disconfirming negatively formatted RfCs) and an expansion. The article shows that such expansions do important work to tailor the response to the situated informational needs of the requester in a cooperative way beyond the constraints of type-conformity.
{"title":"Request for confirmation sequences in German","authors":"Arnulf Deppermann, Alexandra Gubina, Katharina König, Martin Pfeiffer","doi":"10.1515/opli-2024-0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2024-0008","url":null,"abstract":"In request for confirmation (RfC) sequences, interlocutors negotiate their social positions regarding access and rights to knowledge. The article presents an overview of a quantitative analysis of 200 RfCs and their responses in German conversations to highlight the relevant linguistic resources speakers of the language deployed to position themselves <jats:italic>vis-à-vis</jats:italic> a confirmable proposition. In German RfCs, modal particles and tags play an important role in expressing the requester’s epistemic stance; explicit inference marking is used less frequently. Responses usually include response tokens (among others <jats:italic>doch</jats:italic> as a token specialized for disconfirming negatively formatted RfCs) and an expansion. The article shows that such expansions do important work to tailor the response to the situated informational needs of the requester in a cooperative way beyond the constraints of type-conformity.","PeriodicalId":43803,"journal":{"name":"Open Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141886524","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We present evidence for an overlap in the discourse functions of Spanish cómo que XP ‘how thatcomplementizer’ and French comment ça ∅/XP ‘how thatdemonstrative’ interrogatives. We argue for three shared discourse functions: clarification requests, mirative questions, and expressions of disagreement. We show that these functions are cued by an interplay of morpho-syntactic and contextual factors. At the morpho-syntactic level, whether grammatical person shifts (is indirectly cited) compared to the previous turn and whether additional linguistic material (the ‘remnant’) is present after ‘how that’ were found to be important predictors of discourse function. At the contextual level, whether and how the speaker continues her turn after the interrogative is our most significant predictor. We quantify the degree to which these and other cues allow for a prediction of the discourse functions and find that the resulting model predicts more clarification request uses and fewer mirative and disagreement uses than empirically attested. This indicates that some cues for these two readings are missing from our model. We propose that prosody might be one of them.
我们提出了西班牙语 cómo que XP "如何完成 "和法语 comment ça ∅/XP "如何演示 "疑问句话语功能重叠的证据。我们论证了三种共同的话语功能：澄清请求、镜像提问和分歧表达。我们的研究表明，这些功能是由形态句法和语境因素的相互作用引起的。在语态句法层面，与前一转折相比，语法人称是否发生变化（被间接引用），以及 "how that "之后是否存在额外的语言材料（"残余"），都是预测话语功能的重要因素。在语境层面，说话人是否以及如何在问句之后继续转折是我们最重要的预测因素。我们量化了这些线索和其他线索对话语功能的预测程度，发现由此得出的模型预测出的澄清请求用法比经验证明的要多，而镜像和分歧用法要少。这表明我们的模型中缺少这两种读法的某些线索。我们认为，前音可能就是其中之一。
{"title":"On the overlapping discourse functions of Spanish ‘cómo que’ and French ‘comment ça’ interrogatives","authors":"Jan Fliessbach, Lisa Brunetti, Hiyon Yoo","doi":"10.1515/opli-2024-0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2024-0005","url":null,"abstract":"We present evidence for an overlap in the discourse functions of Spanish <jats:italic>cómo que XP</jats:italic> ‘how that<jats:sub>complementizer</jats:sub>’ and French <jats:italic>comment ça</jats:italic> ∅/XP ‘how that<jats:sub>demonstrative</jats:sub>’ interrogatives. We argue for three shared discourse functions: clarification requests, mirative questions, and expressions of disagreement. We show that these functions are cued by an interplay of morpho-syntactic and contextual factors. At the morpho-syntactic level, whether grammatical person shifts (is indirectly cited) compared to the previous turn and whether additional linguistic material (the ‘remnant’) is present after ‘how that’ were found to be important predictors of discourse function. At the contextual level, whether and how the speaker continues her turn after the interrogative is our most significant predictor. We quantify the degree to which these and other cues allow for a prediction of the discourse functions and find that the resulting model predicts more clarification request uses and fewer mirative and disagreement uses than empirically attested. This indicates that some cues for these two readings are missing from our model. We propose that prosody might be one of them.","PeriodicalId":43803,"journal":{"name":"Open Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141610261","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article presents the quantitative findings from a comparative study of request for confirmation (RfC) sequences in British English (BE) and American English (AE). The study is part of a large-scale cross-linguistic research project on RfCs in ten languages. RfCs put forward a proposition about which the speaker claims some knowledge but for which they seek (dis)confirmation from an informed co-participant. The article examines linguistic resources for building RfCs and their responses in the two English varieties. RfCs are analyzed with regard to their syntactic design, polarity, modulation, inference marking, connectives, question tags, and the prosodic design of confirmables and potential question tags. Responses to RfCs are analyzed with regard to response type, the use, type and position of response tokens, (non-)minimal responses in turns with a response token, response prefacing, and repeat responses. BE and AE are found to resemble each other closely in most categories. A major exception is their prosodic design, however. Specifically, the preference for the final pitch pattern of RfCs differs markedly in the two varieties: BE shows a strong preference for final falling pitch; AE shows a preference for final rising pitch. This suggests that the two varieties have routinized distinct intonation patterns for expressing epistemic (un)certainty in RfCs.
{"title":"Request for confirmation sequences in British and American English","authors":"Uwe-A. Küttner, Beatrice Szczepek Reed","doi":"10.1515/opli-2024-0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2024-0012","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents the quantitative findings from a comparative study of request for confirmation (RfC) sequences in British English (BE) and American English (AE). The study is part of a large-scale cross-linguistic research project on RfCs in ten languages. RfCs put forward a proposition about which the speaker claims some knowledge but for which they seek (dis)confirmation from an informed co-participant. The article examines linguistic resources for building RfCs and their responses in the two English varieties. RfCs are analyzed with regard to their syntactic design, polarity, modulation, inference marking, connectives, question tags, and the prosodic design of confirmables and potential question tags. Responses to RfCs are analyzed with regard to response type, the use, type and position of response tokens, (non-)minimal responses in turns with a response token, response prefacing, and repeat responses. BE and AE are found to resemble each other closely in most categories. A major exception is their prosodic design, however. Specifically, the preference for the final pitch pattern of RfCs differs markedly in the two varieties: BE shows a strong preference for final falling pitch; AE shows a preference for final rising pitch. This suggests that the two varieties have routinized distinct intonation patterns for expressing epistemic (un)certainty in RfCs.","PeriodicalId":43803,"journal":{"name":"Open Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141572961","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
As part of a cross-linguistic investigation of request for confirmation (RfC) sequences, this article provides an overview of distributional tendencies associated with Korean RfC sequences based on an examination of 200 tokens of RfC excerpted from audio- and video-recorded face-to-face ordinary conversations. Various grammatical and contextual features associated with RfCs are analyzed, e.g., as interactional resources for grounding RfCs in inferencing, rendering them modulated in action, or connecting them to prior talk/action. They include negative polarity markers, connective particles (e.g., -nuntey ‘circumstantial’), modal markers (e.g., -keyss ‘I suppose’), and sentence-ending suffixes (SESs) such as -na (‘dubitative), -ney (‘noticing’), and ‘pseudo-tags’ -ci/cianha, which are composed of -ci (‘committal’). Features of responses to RfCs are examined in terms of response type (e.g., confirmation, disconfirmation, or neither) with special reference to the form and distribution of response tokens, which include not only unmarked interjections such as ung/yey (‘yes’) and ani(-yo) (‘no’), but also kule-marked indexical forms (e.g., ku(leh)ci ‘certainly it is’). The findings shed light on the role of SESs, modal markers, and discourse particles as stance-marking resources that crucially shape the function of RfCs, and the compositional features of response turns that constitute or frame a responsive action to RfCs.
{"title":"Request for confirmation sequences in Korean","authors":"Kyu-hyun Kim","doi":"10.1515/opli-2024-0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2024-0010","url":null,"abstract":"As part of a cross-linguistic investigation of request for confirmation (RfC) sequences, this article provides an overview of distributional tendencies associated with Korean RfC sequences based on an examination of 200 tokens of RfC excerpted from audio- and video-recorded face-to-face ordinary conversations. Various grammatical and contextual features associated with RfCs are analyzed, e.g., as interactional resources for grounding RfCs in inferencing, rendering them modulated in action, or connecting them to prior talk/action. They include negative polarity markers, connective particles (e.g., -<jats:italic>nuntey</jats:italic> ‘circumstantial’), modal markers (e.g., -<jats:italic>keyss</jats:italic> ‘I suppose’), and sentence-ending suffixes (SESs) such as -<jats:italic>na</jats:italic> (‘dubitative), -<jats:italic>ney</jats:italic> (‘noticing’), and ‘pseudo-tags’ -<jats:italic>ci/cianha,</jats:italic> which are composed of -<jats:italic>ci</jats:italic> (‘committal’). Features of responses to RfCs are examined in terms of response type (e.g., confirmation, disconfirmation, or neither) with special reference to the form and distribution of response tokens, which include not only unmarked interjections such as <jats:italic>ung/yey</jats:italic> (‘yes’) and <jats:italic>ani(-yo)</jats:italic> (‘no’), but also <jats:italic>kule</jats:italic>-marked indexical forms (e.g., <jats:italic>ku(leh)ci</jats:italic> ‘certainly it is’). The findings shed light on the role of SESs, modal markers, and discourse particles as stance-marking resources that crucially shape the function of RfCs, and the compositional features of response turns that constitute or frame a responsive action to RfCs.","PeriodicalId":43803,"journal":{"name":"Open Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141572960","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
As a social action, requesting confirmation involves presenting a proposition to be (dis)confirmed and seeking another’s (dis)confirmation of the proposition. This article provides an overview of the lexico-syntactic and prosodic resources used by participants to perform requests for confirmation (RfCs) and to respond to RfCs in Mandarin face-to-face interactions. Drawing on statistical results of the frequencies of a variety of linguistic resources in RfC sequences, this study shows that declaratives are the most frequently used syntactic forms for RfCs in the Mandarin data. Tags, such as shiba ‘right?’, are also frequently used by the speaker to seek (dis)confirmation from the recipient. The RfCs in the data also exhibit one prominent prosodic pattern. That is, a larger number of RfC turns in Mandarin end with falling pitch movement with very moderate slope from mid (M) to low (L). This prosodic pattern stems from the interplay between tones and intonation in Mandarin. In the responses to RfCs, a majority of them are confirmations. Also, response tokens, such as dui ‘right’ and en ‘en’ with falling intonation, are used highly frequently in responses to RfCs in the Mandarin data. Findings in this study afford cross-linguistic research on RfC sequences.
{"title":"Request for confirmation sequences in Mandarin Chinese","authors":"Xiaoting Li","doi":"10.1515/opli-2024-0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2024-0011","url":null,"abstract":"As a social action, requesting confirmation involves presenting a proposition to be (dis)confirmed and seeking another’s (dis)confirmation of the proposition. This article provides an overview of the lexico-syntactic and prosodic resources used by participants to perform requests for confirmation (RfCs) and to respond to RfCs in Mandarin face-to-face interactions. Drawing on statistical results of the frequencies of a variety of linguistic resources in RfC sequences, this study shows that declaratives are the most frequently used syntactic forms for RfCs in the Mandarin data. Tags, such as <jats:italic>shiba</jats:italic> ‘right?’, are also frequently used by the speaker to seek (dis)confirmation from the recipient. The RfCs in the data also exhibit one prominent prosodic pattern. That is, a larger number of RfC turns in Mandarin end with falling pitch movement with very moderate slope from mid (M) to low (L). This prosodic pattern stems from the interplay between tones and intonation in Mandarin. In the responses to RfCs, a majority of them are confirmations. Also, response tokens, such as <jats:italic>dui</jats:italic> ‘right’ and <jats:italic>en</jats:italic> ‘en’ with falling intonation, are used highly frequently in responses to RfCs in the Mandarin data. Findings in this study afford cross-linguistic research on RfC sequences.","PeriodicalId":43803,"journal":{"name":"Open Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141572962","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The present study analyzes the meanings bilingual and multilingual speakers attach to the term mother tongue, a familiar concept which is most often intuitively understood, but difficult to define. Taking as the main frame of reference the vulnerable linguistic communities of Serbia, the authors assess the answers given by the interviewees to the open question “What does the notion of mother tongue mean to you?” asked in the pilot sociolinguistic questionnaire the study is based on. The responses are classified in several categories, which are then analyzed and discussed. The findings show that the speakers give equal importance to the period of language acquisition, in early childhood, and the role of the family in language transmission for defining mother tongue. The diversity of responses obtained in the study suggests that the definitions provided by the censuses, used in the education context, human rights literature, or sociolinguistics, do not necessarily overlap with the social reality, as the actual members of the linguistic communities perceive the concept as being more heterogeneous than generally assumed and do not automatically connect it to mothers.
{"title":"Mother tongue in Serbia: A speakers’ perspective on the meaning of the concept","authors":"Mirjana Mirić, Valentina Sokolovska, Annemarie Sorescu-Marinković","doi":"10.1515/opli-2024-0016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2024-0016","url":null,"abstract":"The present study analyzes the meanings bilingual and multilingual speakers attach to the term <jats:italic>mother tongue</jats:italic>, a familiar concept which is most often intuitively understood, but difficult to define. Taking as the main frame of reference the vulnerable linguistic communities of Serbia, the authors assess the answers given by the interviewees to the open question “What does the notion of <jats:italic>mother tongue</jats:italic> mean to you?” asked in the pilot sociolinguistic questionnaire the study is based on. The responses are classified in several categories, which are then analyzed and discussed. The findings show that the speakers give equal importance to the period of language acquisition, in early childhood, and the role of the family in language transmission for defining <jats:italic>mother tongue</jats:italic>. The diversity of responses obtained in the study suggests that the definitions provided by the censuses, used in the education context, human rights literature, or sociolinguistics, do not necessarily overlap with the social reality, as the actual members of the linguistic communities perceive the concept as being more heterogeneous than generally assumed and do not automatically connect it to mothers.","PeriodicalId":43803,"journal":{"name":"Open Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141501402","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：