Chapter 14
Turn-initial naja in German
This paper investigates the German token naja in
turn initial position in everyday conversation. The paper makes the
argument that naja is produced in situations when
speakers are negotiating some form of break with prior utterances in
the interaction: Prior
research has indicated that in second-pair parts,
naja prefaces disagreements. The current paper
shows that naja is also used in initiating actions
that serve to return to a previous sequence that was not brought to
completion due to actions by the coparticipant(s) or outsiders of
the interaction. In addition, naja is used in third
position turns in which speakers are backing down from a previously
held position. In initiating actions and third positions,
naja serves to indicate the break and
simultaneously initiates actions to overcome it. The findings hold
both for cases in which subsequent talk is prosodically integrated
to naja and the cases in which
naja is not prosodically integrated to the
subsequent talk.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Prior research on turn-initial tokens in German
- 3.Data
- 4.Stand-alone naja
- 5.
Naja in turn-initial position of initiating
actions
- 6.
Naja in second-pair parts
- 7.
Naja in turn-initial position in third position
turns
- 8.
Concluding discussion
-
Acknowledgements
-
Notes
-
References
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