Engagement and information structure in interaction: The intersubjective meaning of two discourse markers in Motu

Abstract

One of the fundamental functions of language is the coordination of attention and/or knowledge between speech participants to facilitate the constructive exchange of information. The ways in which speakers attain intersubjective alignment in interaction have been examined by studies of engagement and information structure, both typological categories that are concerned with common ground management and how communicative goals influence the lexicogrammatical form of an utterance. In Motu, an Oceanic language of New Guinea, two discourse markers, na and be, provide speakers with a grammatical strategy for negotiating the intersubjective relations between speech participants. Na and be optionally mark clausal nominal arguments and formally encode engagement meanings pertaining to (i) the speaker’s assumptions about their addressee’s mental access to a given referent or proposition, and (ii) the subjective anchoring of the content of the marked nominal referent within the epistemic perspective of either the speaker or addressee. However, the use of these markers in wider discourse settings appear to have interpretive effects similar to those discussed for notions related to information structure, such as topicalisation and referent-tracking. Thus, the pragmatic inferences triggered by these engagement markers are utilised by speakers for common ground management beyond simply encoding the relative mental accessibility of a given entity. This thesis presents a preliminary analysis of the intersubjective meaning and function of Motu na and be based on an investigation of their distribution in conversational speech settings. Show more