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(Inter)subjectivity in interaction: Investigating (inter)subjective meanings in Yurakaré conversational data

  • Sonja Gipper EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: June 17, 2015

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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Published Online: 2015-6-17
Published in Print: 2015-7-1

©2015 by De Gruyter Mouton

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