External information processing versus property ascertaining: a discourse-pragmatic study of three yes/no question particles in Shishan (Hainan Island, China)
Abstract
Drawing on naturally occurring conversation, the present study examines three utterance-final yes/no question particles, mi, o, and ang, in Shishan, a dialect of Lingao of the Tai-Kadai language family, spoken on northern Hainan Island (China). Both mi and o signal the proposition as deriving from an external information source (primarily preceding discourse). Mi marks simple, linear knowledge accruement/thought progression, based on external information, including plain registration of new information and simple inference. O signals conflicts between externally derived information vis-à-vis the speaker's pre-existing knowledge/expectation. Ang constructs a genuine query for unknown information, ascertaining whether the quality/characteristic, as coded in the predicate of the utterance, can ascribe to (i.e., ascribable as a property of) the entity represented by the sentential subject. The meaning of “property ascertaining” gives rise to the use of ang in various presequences (cf. Schegloff 1988).
©[2012] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- The (pro)long(ed) life of a “grand narrative”: the case of Internet forum discussions on post-2004 Polish migration to the United Kingdom
- “Your argument is wrong”: a contribution to the study of evaluation in academic weblogs
- Word (and other) search sequences initiated by language learners
- The issue of conversationally constituted context and localization problems in emergency calls
- Applying conceptual metaphor and Blending Theory to culture-specific speech functions in rap lyrics
- Argumentative use of reported speech in British newspaper discourse
- External information processing versus property ascertaining: a discourse-pragmatic study of three yes/no question particles in Shishan (Hainan Island, China)
