Semi-grammaticalized and Pragmatic Means of Common Ground Management in Turkish

Abstract

This paper uses corpus data to exemplify Common Ground (CG) management via semi-grammaticalized and pragmatic means in Turkish. These means are seven discourse markers (hani, işte, ha, hah, ee, evet, hıı) and a verbal enclitic (=ya). CG management has two subtypes: epistemic and structural management (Grzech, 2020a,b). Epistemic management concerns how epistemic rights are distributed among interlocutors while structural management concerns how the conversation will develop in the immediate future. Data show that hani, işte and =ya manage the epistemics of CG by way of shared information while işte, ha, hah, ee, evet and hıı are uttered to lead the conversation in a specific direction. Two of the discourse markers are shown to be polysemic, i.e. they serve to manage CG in multiple ways. İşte may be uttered for epistemic CG management as well as structural management. Hıı, on the other hand, serves three subtypes of structural CG management: remembering, approving, and approving and inviting the addressee to develop the topic. The data are drawn from Turkish National Corpus (TNCv3.0).