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Pragmatic Markers, Discourse Markers and Modal Particles: New perspectives
Edited by Chiara Fedriani and Andrea Sansó
[Studies in Language Companion Series 186] 2017
► pp. 37–69

Chapter 1
The emergence of Hebrew loydea / loydat (‘I dunno masc/fem’) from interaction

Blurring the boundaries between discourse marker, pragmatic marker, and modal particle

| University of Haifa

A general approach to discourse markers is sketched through an analysis which approaches grammar as emerging in interaction and coming into being through mundane language use (Hopper 1987, 2011). The study continues work on mental verb constructions in a variety of languages. By analyzing all 191 tokens of the (subj)-neg-pred construction of the Hebrew mental verb yada (‘know’) employed throughout audio-recordings of over 7.5 hours of Hebrew casual interactional data, I trace the route of this construction’s gravitation towards the discourse marker loydea / loydat (‘I dunno masc/fem’). I argue that employment of the construction is highly formulaic, not necessarily epistemic, and that its uses are closely tied to its prosodic, morphophonological and syntactic properties, to its position within the ongoing turn and sequence, and to the particular activities in which participants engage in interaction. Based on a mostly synchronic analysis of the data, I suggest two grammaticization paths leading to employment of this construction as a discourse marker. This is then supported with some diachronic evidence. The study of Hebrew loydea / loydat (‘I dunno masc/fem’) shows that the boundaries between the three categories of discourse marker, pragmatic marker, and modal particle can be rather blurred.

Keywords: discourse markers, mental verb constructions, grammaticization, Hebrew
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2. ('ani) lo yode'a / yoda'at + object complement constructions
    • 2.1 ('ani) lo yode'a / yoda'at + Object clause
      • 2.1.1 ('ani) lo yode'a / yoda'at + object clause opening with ma (‘what’): Literal use
      • 2.1.2 ('ani) lo yode'a / yoda'at + Object clause opening with 'im (‘if, whether’): Epistemic stance of uncertainty and doubt
    • 2.2 ('ani) lo yode'a / yoda'at + Question word
      • 2.2.1Epistemic stance of uncertainty
      • 2.2.2Repair preface
  • 3. ('ani) lo yode'a / yoda'at constructions lacking an object
    • 3.1Literal uses
    • 3.2Epistemic stance of uncertainty
    • 3.3Repair preface
    • 3.4Changing the course of talk
      • 3.4.1Steering away from an unwanted topic raised by interlocutor
      • 3.4.2Abrupt change of topic
    • 3.5Interlude: An interactional approach to discourse markers
    • 3.6Allowing one’s response to ‘die out’
    • 3.7Avoiding dispreferred response
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 13 November 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.186.02mas
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