Abstract
AbstractThe paper analyses the Swedish modal particlesjuandvälas markers of engagement. This analysis finds support in the distribution and frequency ofjuandvälin a corpus of spoken Swedish along with an examination of existing accounts concerning the semantics of the investigated forms. Engagement encodes differences in the distribution of knowledge and/or attention between the speaker and the addressee, where the basic semantic contrast consists of the speaker asserting an assumption about the addressee’s knowledge of/attention to an event as either shared, or non-shared with the speaker.Juandvälare paradigmatically contrastive in signaling shared access to an event from the point of view of the speaker, or the addressee:jusignals shared access to an event and at the same time places the epistemic authority with the speaker, andvälsignals shared access to an event, placing the epistemic authority with the addressee. Analytical support forjuandvälas markers of engagement comes from the distribution of both forms with first person (jag), second person (du), and generic (man) subject pronouns.
Highlights
This paper analyses the Swedish modal particles ju and väl as markers of engagement (Evans et al 2018a, 2018b)
Ju and väl are paradigmatically contrastive in signaling shared access to an event from the point of view of the speaker, or the addressee: ju signals shared access to an event and at the same time places the epistemic authority with the speaker, and väl signals shared access to an event, placing the epistemic authority with the addressee
Analytical support for ju and väl as markers of engagement comes from the distribution of both forms with first person, second person, and generic subject pronouns
Summary
This paper analyses the Swedish modal particles ju and väl as markers of engagement (Evans et al 2018a, 2018b). Are modal particles frequent in spoken Swedish, they are predictably connected to the egophoric pronouns, jag, du, and man (i.e., first, second, and generic subject forms; see Dahl 2000; and Section 3, below) This connection results from the proposed semantics of ju and väl, viz. The two main claims of this paper are that the modal particles ju and väl in Swedish may be analyzed using the notion of engagement and that support for this proposal comes from the distribution of both forms with first (jag), second (du), and generic (man) person subject pronouns.
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