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Part of
Information-Structural Perspectives on Discourse Particles
Edited by Pierre-Yves Modicom and Olivier Duplâtre
[Studies in Language Companion Series 213] 2020
► pp. 251–276

Chapter 10
The discourse marker hani in Turkish

| Bogazici University
| Bogazici University

This study is dedicated to the Turkish discourse marker hani, which exhibits three kinds of use. It appears in interrogative sentences with a wh-question intonation. In these cases, the use of hani indicates that the context provides counter evidence for the belief /expectations of the speaker and the speaker demands an account for it from the hearer. Hani also appears at the beginning of clauses ending with the particle ya. Those utterances are questions demanding an answer from the hearer and reminding the speaker’s belief or expectation, which the hearer is expected to corroborate. Finally, hani can appear in declarative clauses expressing the same value of reminding the hearer of a belief of the speaker. The common core of all three uses is the notion of shared knowledge: hani is used for the sake of Common Ground management. Drawing on previous research on negative polar questions as well as inner negation and outer negation in questions, we show that utterances including hani with wh-question intonation involve a negation and a question operator and show an “inner negation” reading. Hani… ya utterances are compatible with the outer negation reading of negative polar questions and demand neutral contexts or positive evidence. Declarative hani is incompatible with contexts that provide negative evidence, but felicitous in neutral and positive contexts.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Previous research on hani
  • 3.Negated polar questions
  • 4.Negative polar questions and hani constructions
    • 4.1Hani constructions with wh-intonation
    • 4.2Hani constructions with the particle ya
    • 4.3Hani constructions with declarative intonation
  • 5.The difference between hani constructions and negative polar questions
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • List of abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 4 March 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.213.10aka
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KURAM, Kadri
2023. Semi-grammaticalized and Pragmatic Means of Common Ground Management in Turkish. Dil Araştırmaları 17:33 ► pp. 71 ff. DOI logo
Shan, Yi
2021. Investigating the Interaction Between Prosody and Pragmatics Quantitatively: A Case Study of the Chinese Discourse Marker ni zhidao (“You Know”). Frontiers in Psychology 12 DOI logo
Shan, Yi
2023. A Domain-Function Analysis of ni zhidao (你知道, “You Know”) in Chinese Simultaneous Speech. SAGE Open 13:4 DOI logo

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