Abstract
This paper investigates the interactional uses of the two Yurakaré (isolate, central Bolivia) epistemic modal markers and =ya ‘intersubjective’ and =laba ‘subjective’. While subjective =laba indicates a personal epistemic judgment of the speaker, intersubjective =ya conveys that the speaker expects the addressee to share the expressed epistemic judgment. The distributions of the two markers in interaction are argued to reflect their (inter)subjective meaning components. This demonstrates that conversational data provide important clues for investigating (inter)subjective meanings in language.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the speakers of Yurakaré for kindly participating in the collection of the data on which the present analysis is based. Thanks also to Katja Hannß, Lila San Roque, Henrik Bergqvist, and an anonymous reviewer for their inspiring comments on earlier versions of this paper, to Jeremías Ballivián and his team for the transcriptions of the data, to Rik van Gijn and Vincent Hirtzel for many insightful discussions, and to Rik van Gijn for the conversation from Nueva Lacea. The research reported here was funded by the DobeS initiative of the Volkswagen Foundation. Commercial rights of the data lie with CEPY (Consejo Educativo del Pueblo Yurakaré). All remaining errors are mine.
Abbreviations
- Conversational transcript
- =
adjacent turns or utterances latched to each other
- (0.5)
pause, duration in seconds
- (.)
mini pause
- [
start of overlap between turns of different speakers
- ]
end of overlap
- ?
rising intonation
- ()
not fully audible
- (...)
not audible
- (())
non-verbal actions
Glosses
- 1
first person
- 2
second person
- 3
third person
- adap
adaptive
- com
comitative
- comm
commitment
- cont
continuative
- dcsd
deceased
- dem
demonstrative
- des
desiderative
- dir
directional
- ds
different subject
- f
female speaker
- fr
frustrative
- fut
future
- ideo
ideophone
- imp
imperative
- inf
inferential
- ins
instrumental
- intj
interjection
- ints
intensive
- intsubj
intersubjective
- jus
jussive
- loc
locative
- mal
malefactive
- mints
medium intensity
- neg
negator
- nsit
new situation
- obj
object
- pl
plural
- poss
possessive
- propn
proper name
- psup
presupposition
- pv
possessive verbalizer
- ref
referential
- sg
singular
- sp
Spanish
- sbj
subject
- subj
subjective
- top
topic
- vloc
verbal locative
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©2015 by De Gruyter Mouton
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Epistemic marking and multiple perspective: An introduction
- The encoding of addressee’s perspective in Kakataibo (Panoan, Peru)
- Refracting views: How to construct complex perspective in reported speech and thought in Ungarinyin
- Using you to get to me: Addressee perspective and speaker stance in Duna evidential marking
- (Inter)subjectivity in interaction: Investigating (inter)subjective meanings in Yurakaré conversational data
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Epistemic marking and multiple perspective: An introduction
- The encoding of addressee’s perspective in Kakataibo (Panoan, Peru)
- Refracting views: How to construct complex perspective in reported speech and thought in Ungarinyin
- Using you to get to me: Addressee perspective and speaker stance in Duna evidential marking
- (Inter)subjectivity in interaction: Investigating (inter)subjective meanings in Yurakaré conversational data