Wu2017
| Wu2017 | |
|---|---|
| BibType | INCOLLECTION |
| Key | Wu2017 |
| Author(s) | Ruey-Jiuan Regina Wu |
| Title | Particles and epistemics: Convergences and divergences between English and Mandarin; |
| Editor(s) | Geoffrey Raymond, Gene H. Lerner, John Heritage |
| Tag(s) | EMCA, epistemics, Particles, Mandarin, stance, English |
| Publisher | John Benjamins Publishing |
| Year | 2017 |
| Language | |
| City | Amsterdam / Philadelphia |
| Month | |
| Journal | |
| Volume | |
| Number | |
| Pages | 273–298 |
| URL | Link |
| DOI | 10.1075/pbns.273.14wu |
| ISBN | |
| Organization | |
| Institution | |
| School | |
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| Howpublished | |
| Book title | Enabling Human Conduct: Studies of talk-in-interaction in honor of Emanuel A. Schegloff |
| Chapter | |
Abstract
This chapter examines three particles that have epistemic functions in English and Mandarin: turn-initial‘oh’in English, turn-initial‘ou’in Mandarin, and turn-final‘a’in Mandarin. It is argued that whileouandohconverge in registering a ‘change of state’ of information, orientation or awareness, turn-finalais used to register a contrast between oneself and an interlocutor, which often implicates, and reflexively embodies, the speaker’s pre-existing knowledge, perspective, expectation or experience in relation to the matter at issue. This “contrast-invoking” usage of turn-final‘a’can be mobilized to problematize the action of the previous speaker by marking it as counter to the speaker’s expectation, thus converging withoh-prefacing in this particular interactional usage despite their normal functional divide. The chapter ends with a consideration of putatively universal pragmatic needs that are carried out using distinctive resources, and a distinctive division of labor among resources, in the two languages.
Notes
