Linguistic Evidence 2018 On the difference between the Federal German and the Austrian German discourse particle eh An experimental investigation Sarah Zobel Feb 17, 2018
Introduction FG and AG ‘eh’ Experiment Discussion Conclusion The discourse particle eh Discourse particle eh is found across all German speaking areas (1) Die meisten Besucher bleiben eh nur einige Stunden. ‘ Most visitors stay EH only a few hours. ’ (BRZ13/JAN.06279, 01/2013, Braunschweig, Germany) (2) Einige Zuschauer waren eh ein wenig verärgert. ‘ Some viewers were EH a bit annoyed. ’ (NON13/JUL.15266, 07/2013, Lower Austria, Austria) (3) Laster sind in Bischofszell eh tabu. ‘ Trucks are EH prohibited in Bischofszell. ’ (A09/JUN.06993, 06/2009, St. Gallen, Switzerland) Default assumption: eh contributes the same meaning in the different varieties of German 2 / 44 | Sarah Zobel sarah.zobel @ ds.uni-tuebingen.de
Introduction FG and AG ‘eh’ Experiment Discussion Conclusion Aim of this talk Main aim: challenge the default assumption that eh means the same in the different variants of German (Source: wikipedia.de) 3 / 44 | Sarah Zobel sarah.zobel @ ds.uni-tuebingen.de
Introduction FG and AG ‘eh’ Experiment Discussion Conclusion Aim of this talk Main aim: challenge the default assumption that eh means the same in the different variants of German ⇒ compare eh as used in Federal German (FG) and as used in Austrian German (AG) (Source: wikipedia.de) 3 / 44 | Sarah Zobel sarah.zobel @ ds.uni-tuebingen.de
Introduction FG and AG ‘eh’ Experiment Discussion Conclusion Aim of this talk Main aim: challenge the default assumption that eh means the same in the different variants of German ⇒ compare eh as used in Federal German (FG) and as used in Austrian German (AG) ⇒ report the results of a comparative study on the acceptability of eh in polar questions (Source: wikipedia.de) 3 / 44 | Sarah Zobel sarah.zobel @ ds.uni-tuebingen.de
Introduction FG and AG ‘eh’ Experiment Discussion Conclusion Aim of this talk Main aim: challenge the default assumption that eh means the same in the different variants of German ⇒ compare eh as used in Federal German (FG) and as used in Austrian German (AG) ⇒ report the results of a comparative study on the acceptability of eh in polar questions ⇒ discuss the implications for studying the differences between FG eh and AG eh (Source: wikipedia.de) 3 / 44 | Sarah Zobel sarah.zobel @ ds.uni-tuebingen.de
Introduction FG and AG ‘eh’ Experiment Discussion Conclusion Roadmap Introduction FG and AG ‘eh’ Background on discourse particles Analyses of ‘eh’ Experiment Discussion Comparison of FG and AG speakers Implications for the analysis of FG ‘eh’ and AG ‘eh’ Conclusion 4 / 44 | Sarah Zobel sarah.zobel @ ds.uni-tuebingen.de
Introduction FG and AG ‘eh’ Experiment Discussion Conclusion Background: German discourse particles – I German is particle-rich: ja , doch , wohl , denn , etwa , . . . eh Properties of particles: (a.o. Eckardt 2013, Egg & Zimmermann 2012, Matthewson 2016, Repp 2013, Rojas-Esponda 2014, Zimmermann 2011) 5 / 44 | Sarah Zobel sarah.zobel @ ds.uni-tuebingen.de
Introduction FG and AG ‘eh’ Experiment Discussion Conclusion Background: German discourse particles – I German is particle-rich: ja , doch , wohl , denn , etwa , . . . eh Properties of particles: ◮ are sensitive to the sentence type of the containing utterance (a.o. Eckardt 2013, Egg & Zimmermann 2012, Matthewson 2016, Repp 2013, Rojas-Esponda 2014, Zimmermann 2011) 5 / 44 | Sarah Zobel sarah.zobel @ ds.uni-tuebingen.de
Introduction FG and AG ‘eh’ Experiment Discussion Conclusion Background: German discourse particles – I German is particle-rich: ja , doch , wohl , denn , etwa , . . . eh Properties of particles: ◮ are sensitive to the sentence type of the containing utterance ◮ are sensitive to the preceding discourse (a.o. Eckardt 2013, Egg & Zimmermann 2012, Matthewson 2016, Repp 2013, Rojas-Esponda 2014, Zimmermann 2011) 5 / 44 | Sarah Zobel sarah.zobel @ ds.uni-tuebingen.de
Introduction FG and AG ‘eh’ Experiment Discussion Conclusion Background: German discourse particles – I German is particle-rich: ja , doch , wohl , denn , etwa , . . . eh Properties of particles: ◮ are sensitive to the sentence type of the containing utterance ◮ are sensitive to the preceding discourse ◮ fit the containing utterance to the preceding context ⇒ “discourse navigating devices” ⇒ means to perform “discourse management” (a.o. Eckardt 2013, Egg & Zimmermann 2012, Matthewson 2016, Repp 2013, Rojas-Esponda 2014, Zimmermann 2011) 5 / 44 | Sarah Zobel sarah.zobel @ ds.uni-tuebingen.de
Introduction FG and AG ‘eh’ Experiment Discussion Conclusion Background: German discourse particles – I German is particle-rich: ja , doch , wohl , denn , etwa , . . . eh Properties of particles: ◮ are sensitive to the sentence type of the containing utterance ◮ are sensitive to the preceding discourse ◮ fit the containing utterance to the preceding context ⇒ “discourse navigating devices” ⇒ means to perform “discourse management” ◮ typically do not contribute to the truth-conditions of the containing utterance (“not-at-issue meaning”) (a.o. Eckardt 2013, Egg & Zimmermann 2012, Matthewson 2016, Repp 2013, Rojas-Esponda 2014, Zimmermann 2011) 5 / 44 | Sarah Zobel sarah.zobel @ ds.uni-tuebingen.de
Introduction FG and AG ‘eh’ Experiment Discussion Conclusion Background: German discourse particles – II “discourse navigating devices”: particles make reference to the speaker’s attitudes regarding the utterance content in reference to the current state of the discourse. 6 / 44 | Sarah Zobel sarah.zobel @ ds.uni-tuebingen.de
Introduction FG and AG ‘eh’ Experiment Discussion Conclusion Background: German discourse particles – II “discourse navigating devices”: particles make reference to the speaker’s attitudes regarding the utterance content in reference to the current state of the discourse. Example: doch (see e.g. Grosz 2014, Zimmermann 2011) (4) A: When will you be coming by tomorrow? B: I can’t come by tomorrow, sorry. . . I thought we wanted to meet Sunday. . . A: Morgen ist doch Sonntag. (‘ Tomorrow is DOCH Sunday. ’) 6 / 44 | Sarah Zobel sarah.zobel @ ds.uni-tuebingen.de
Introduction FG and AG ‘eh’ Experiment Discussion Conclusion Background: German discourse particles – II “discourse navigating devices”: particles make reference to the speaker’s attitudes regarding the utterance content in reference to the current state of the discourse. Example: doch (see e.g. Grosz 2014, Zimmermann 2011) (4) A: When will you be coming by tomorrow? B: I can’t come by tomorrow, sorry. . . I thought we wanted to meet Sunday. . . A: Morgen ist doch Sonntag. (‘ Tomorrow is DOCH Sunday. ’) doch signals: ⇒ content in the preceding context is in conflict with the content of the containing utterance ⇒ the speaker judges the containing utterance as uncontroversially true 6 / 44 | Sarah Zobel sarah.zobel @ ds.uni-tuebingen.de
Introduction FG and AG ‘eh’ Experiment Discussion Conclusion Background: German discourse particles – III Different particles can: ◮ have different restrictions regarding sentence types ◮ be sensitive to different aspects of the context ◮ express different speaker attitudes ◮ potentially differ in their (not-)at-issueness Use these aspects to figure out: ◮ whether two particles differ in their semantics ◮ the exact discourse effects of single particles 7 / 44 | Sarah Zobel sarah.zobel @ ds.uni-tuebingen.de
Introduction FG and AG ‘eh’ Experiment Discussion Conclusion ‘Consensus’ in the previous literature The discourse particle eh : ◮ can freely occur in declaratives and is restricted but possible in polar interrogatives ◮ signals that the content of its containing utterance is the case independently of a contextually given potential cause (5) Peter geht heute eh zur Post. ‘ Peter will EH go to the post office today. ’ ⇒ synonymous with / performs the same function as sowieso (Eggs 2003, Bruijnen & Sudhoff 2013, Fisseni 2009, Thurmair 1989, Weydt 1983) 8 / 44 | Sarah Zobel sarah.zobel @ ds.uni-tuebingen.de
Introduction FG and AG ‘eh’ Experiment Discussion Conclusion Observation: eh / sowieso in AG ◮ Assumption: eh and sowieso perform the same function ◮ Expectation: we do not find eh and sowieso in the same utterance ⇒ no corpus hits for “eh sowieso” in the available corpora for FG 9 / 44 | Sarah Zobel sarah.zobel @ ds.uni-tuebingen.de
Introduction FG and AG ‘eh’ Experiment Discussion Conclusion Observation: eh / sowieso in AG ◮ Assumption: eh and sowieso perform the same function ◮ Expectation: we do not find eh and sowieso in the same utterance ⇒ no corpus hits for “eh sowieso” in the available corpora for FG ◮ Observation: we find examples of eh sowieso in AG (6) Ich finde der was angeln will, der beschäftigt sich eh sowieso damit. ‘ I believe that someone who wants to go fishing will EH SOWIESO engage with this. ’ (from: http://anglerforum.at) (7) Ja klar, machen wir eh sowieso. ‘ Of course, we do that EH SOWIESO . ’ (from: http://judithkirchmayr.at) 9 / 44 | Sarah Zobel sarah.zobel @ ds.uni-tuebingen.de
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