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Intersubjectivity in Action: Studies in language and social interaction
Edited by Jan Lindström, Ritva Laury, Anssi Peräkylä and Marja-Leena Sorjonen
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 326] 2021
► pp. 41–

Definitely indefinite

Negotiating intersubjective common ground in everyday interaction in Finnish

| University of Helsinki

This chapter concerns expressions which seem internally contradictory because they consist of both a recognitional and a non-recognitional element. They contain both the Finnish demonstrative se ‘that, the’, a recognitional, as in se ihminen ‘that/the person’, and one of the indefinite determiners yksi ‘one’, semmonen ‘such’, and joku ‘some’, all of which are non-recognitionals, resulting in expressions such as se joku ihminen ‘that/the some person’. The chapter shows that each of these expressions has its own home environment and expresses a distinct epistemic stance. The main findings are that these expressions constitute a fine-grained resource for the negotiation of relative epistemic status and are tools for building intersubjective common ground in interaction.

Keywords: definite, indefinite, recognitional, specific, identifiable, determiner, epistemic
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background on referring and the use of referential forms in interaction
  • 3.Data and methodology
  • 4.Definite indefinites in Finnish conversation
    • 4.1 Se yks in negotiations of epistemic access
    • 4.2 Se semmonen in category negotiations
    • 4.3 Se joku in mentions of unimportant referents
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 17 November 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.326.03lau
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