Turn-peripheral management of Common Ground: A study of Swabian gell

Abstract

The present study investigates the function of the Swabian particle gell. This particle is employed to manage the Common Ground – either in a narrative or in a dialogical context. Focusing on the dialogical context, I show that gell has two intersubjective flavors: one is to request confirmation; the other is to demand it. Both flavors are available at the beginning and at the end of a turn. This is demonstrated by a quantitative analysis of the distributional behavior of the two flavors in two independent forced-choice response studies. Both flavors show an identical response pattern at both peripheries. This result is relevant for the question of whether the two turn peripheries have different discourse-functions. Under such an asymmetric perspective, turn-initial particles have a subjective meaning and turn-final particles have an intersubjective meaning (e.g. Beeching et al., 2009). Beyond a peripherally-independent meaning, the properties of gell suggest that the notion of intersubjectivity is best conceived as a matter of degree: gell has three different contexts of use, each instantiating a different degree of intersubjectivity.