The ‘new’ Russian quotative tipa: Pragmatic scope and functions

Abstract

The study proposes a typology of the main pragmati≿ functions of the new Russian quotative marker tipa in discourse of young speakers. Based on the analysis of material from an Internet student forum, I present the communicative situations tipa is involved in as an algorithm which can unfold in several directions, depending on the parameters of (i) discursive embedding of the reported information, (ii) its source and (iii) reliability according to the actual speaker. The various quotative and related subuses are presented as a field structure with multiple cores and peripheries which flow continuously into one another.Special attention is given to the fact that tipa represents two crosslinguistic tendencies of language change: the rise of new quotatives and the grammaticalization of type nouns. Though this article's interest lies primarily in the description of the synchronic interrelation of the subuses, the analysis demonstrates that in Russian tipa has undergone a seemingly paradoxical shift from conveying similarity to indicating meanings close to ‘quasi, pseudo’, not attested so far in other languages researched in regard to the grammaticalization of type nouns. Another tendency revealed by the data is towards the ‘explanation marker’ use, which currently seems to be specific to the younger generation.