The meaning and function of Norwegian Tags
Here is an example of sjø in the dialects around Trøndelag in mid-Norway.
Æ kjæm tebake i morra, sjø.
‘I'll come back tomorrow, [you see]’
Sjø guides the hearer towards an interpretation where the utterance supports an assumption at play in the conversation, and the speaker is viewed as slightly better informed than the hearer.
In the first paper devoted entirely to sjø, Kaja Borthen and Åshild Søfteland investigate the geographical distribution of sjø and propose a semantic and pragmatic analysis. And Christoph Unger has written a paper where he proposes how to integrate sociolinguistic aspects of tags into the relevance-theoretic pragmatic framework.
DA
Da can occur in tag position and in sentence internal position. In tag position, da signals that the speech act is motivated by something in the context:
Har du kondis til det, da?
‘Are you fit for that? [I ask because of what you said]’
In sentence internal position, da signals that the information in the utterance is something the hearer (or somebody else) actually knew, but apparently had forgotten to take into consideration.
Jeg er da i fin form.
‘I'm in good shape [as you know but forgot]’
Signe Rix Berthelin has written a paper on sentence internal da, and Kaja Borthen has written a paper on tag da. Interestingly, also pronouns may occur in tag position in Norwegian. Kaja Borthen has written a paper on this phenomenon.
SJØ
The particles
DA MATA
Here is an example of da mata from the dialects in Nord-Gudbrandsdalen:
Det er så dumt med hvit duk, da mata.
‘A white table cloth is so unpractical, [must know]'
Da mata strengthens the epistemic status of the utterance content, and signals that the utterance contains information that the hearer ought to know but might not be aware of. This semantics leads to various pragmatic effects in different contexts, such as surprise or argumentative effects.
Perlaug Marie Kveen and Kaja Borthen are currently working on the first research paper on da mata. Their study is based on interview data and corpus data. Until their paper is ready, we recommend this conference presentation.
VISST
Visst occurs in sentence internal position only.
Huset hans er visst rødt.
‘His house is red, [apparently].'
In their paper on visst, Kaja Borthen and Cecilie Slinning Knudsen demonstrate that visst has the following meaning: 'I have become aware of this through likely evidence that this is the case'. That is, visst signals that the speaker bases her statement on a piece of evidence, but it does not mean that she is necessarily uncertain of what she is saying. Borthen and Knudsen's corpus investigation shows that visst leads to pragmatic effects of uncertainty in many contexts. But visst may also be used when the speaker is certain and has first-hand evidence. In those contexts, visst is often interpreted as an expression of surprise ('mirativity').
ASS
Work in progress.
JO
Jo may occur in tag position and in sentence internal position.
Marit: La oss ta en øl!
'Let's have a beer!'
Ola: Det er jo hverdag.
'It's a school night [you know]'
Kaja Borthen and Signe Rix Berthelin have conducted a corpus investigation which shows that sentence internal jo has the following meaning: 'The utterance content is mutually manifest, and it is used as a premise for deriving a conclusion'.
The 'mutually manifest' component means that an utterance with jo presents the content as epistemically accessible to the hearer as well as the speaker. That is, the content is not necessarily already known to the hearer - but it is "knowable".
The 'premise' component means that an utterance with jo instructs the hearer to use the content and draw an inference. In Ola's utterance above, jo signals that 'it's a school night' is a premise for deriving the conclusion 'we should not go for a beer'.
The paper is coming soon in Nordic Journal of Linguistics. In the meantime, we recommend this conference presentation.
Research methods
Valid linguistic research is dependent on good quality data. In this project, we are using different types of data and a range of different research methods to get the full picture of the meaning and function of the Norwegian particles. We have used corpora, interviews, and questionnaires, and soon we will conduct psycholinguistic experiments too.
Corpora
The Text Laboratory ('Tekstlaboratoriet') at the University of Oslo, has put down a tremendous amount of work to compile and annotate high quality language corpora of different genres. Our project has benefited from using spoken language corpora like The BigBrother Corpus and The Nordic Dialect Corpus, as well as written language corpora like The Oslo Corpus of Tagged Norwegian Texts and the Oslo Multilingual Corpus.
Interviews
In connection to the work on da mata we conducted semi-structured interviews with native speakers of the Nord-Gudbrandsdalen dialect. The interviews made it possible to test hypotheses and previous descriptions of the meaning and use of da mata.
Questionnaires
We are using questionnaires in our survey of which particles are in use in which dialects. The questionnaires are also used to test which meanings and interpretations are associated with the individual particles. Several hundred helpful people from across the country have kindly answered our questionnaires. Thank you so much!
To learn more about the methods employed throughout the project, we recommend consulting the individual publications, especially this one.
Theoretical foundations
The project is primarily empirically driven, because the main objective is to fully understand the meaning and use of the individual particles. However, pragmatic theory is essential to the task of providing precise descriptions of the particles and especially to the task of explaining how and why these abstract linguistic expressions give rise to different interpretations in different contexts. To perform these tasks, the project makes use of insights from relevance theory.
Relevance theory is a cognitive pragmatic theory of how human communication works. This page gives an overview of the many linguistic phenomena explored and accounted for within relevance theory. The theory includes an account of how semantic (encoded, "stable") meaning interacts with cognitive and contextual properties to yield various context specific pragmatic interpretations. This distinction helps us identify the inherent and abstract meaning of a particle and tell it apart from the meaning aspects that may be triggered in certain contexts.
The conceptual-procedural distinction is another import theoretical tool that helps to shed light on the abstract properties of pragmatic particles. The notion of procedural meaning was first launched by Diane Blakemore to understand how discourse markers or "function words" like so and after all contribute to the utterance interpretation. Conceptual expressions or "content words" like dog and run, encode instructions on which ad hoc concept the hearer should access in order to understand what the speaker intends to communicate. That is, the phonological form rendered orthographically as run is connected to a vague notion of 'running'. Upon the interpretation of an utterance containing this form, the hearer needs to adjust this notion into the intended form of running, depending on, among other things, contextual properties such as who or what is running (e.g. time, water, a horse). Procedural expressions, on the other hand, encode instructions on which procedure the hearer should follow in order to interpret the utterance. The Norwegian tag particle da, does not lead to a context specific version of a 'da'-concept (whatever that might be). Da rather instructs the hearer to follow an interpretation procedure where the speech act is viewed as contextually motivated and in opposition to somebody else's view. And the Norwegian particle jo in sentence internal position instructs the hearer to follow an interpretation procedure where the proposition is viewed as epistemically accessible to the speaker and hearer and is used as the premise for drawing or supporting a conclusion (an 'implicature').
To see how relevance theory is employed in the analyses and accounts of Norwegian pragmatic particles, we recommend consulting the individual publications.
Right dislocated pronouns
Norwegian is a language that allows for right-dislocated pronouns, as in the examples to the left below:
1. a. Jeg må nesten gå, jeg. b. Jeg må nesten gå.
I must almost go, I I must almost go
‘Sorry, I am afraid I have to leave’ ‘I have to leave’
If you suddenly have to leave a situation where you are supposed to stay, it is appropriate to use the sentence in (1a). with pronominal right-diclocation. One gets the feeling that a person who says this apologizes for leaving so suddenly. Thus, (1a). appears as less abrupt and more polite than (1b), other things being equal.
In the utterance in (2a) we get an almost opposite effect as in (1a).
2. a. Du tror du er noe, du! b. Du tror du er noe.
You think you are something, you you think you are someone
‘You think too good of yourself!’ ‘You think you are someone’
In (2a), the utterance with pronominal right-dislocation is more easily be interpreted as emphatic and agitated than the corresponding sentence without the extra pronoun in (2b).
A third type of effect can be observed in the sentence in (3a):
3. a. Pål regnes liksom ikke med, han. b. Pål regnes liksom ikke med.
Paul counts sort.of not with he Paul counts sort.of not with
‘Paul, on the other hand, sort of doesn’t count’ ‘Paul sort of doesn’t count’
The person who utters (3a) is indicating that other people count whereas Paul does not count. In other words, the pronominal right-dislocation introduces a contrastive interpretation: Paul is treated differently from other people. As a result, the speaker seems more agitated and hurt on behalf of Paul.
Kaja Borthen has examined authentic examples with right-dislocated pronouns. In her paper she claims that the many different effects that pronominal right-dislocation can lead to has to do with Talmy Givón’s observation that languages tend to use marked constructions for discontinuity and nonpredictability.