NU / NÅ: A Family of Discourse Markers Across the Languages of Europe and Beyond 9783110348989, 9783110347234

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NU/NÅ

linguae & litterae

Publications of the School of Language & Literature Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies Edited by Peter Auer · Gesa von Essen · Werner Frick Editorial Board Michel Espagne (Paris), Marino Freschi (Rom), Ekkehard König (Berlin), Michael Lackner (Erlangen-Nürnberg), Per Linell (Linköping), Angelika Linke (Zürich), Christine Maillard (Strasbourg), Lorenza Mondada (Basel), Pieter Muysken (Nijmegen), Wolfgang Raible (Freiburg), Monika Schmitz-Emans (Bochum)

Volume 58

NU/NÅ

A Family of Discourse Markers across the Languages of Europe and Beyond Edited by Peter Auer and Yael Maschler

ISBN 978-3-11-034723-4 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-034898-9 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-038646-2 ISSN 1869-7054 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2016 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Typesetting: epline, Neuffen Printing: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Contents Peter Auer and Yael Maschler The family of NU and NÅ across the languages of Europe and beyond: Structure, function, and history  1 Galina B. Bolden The discourse marker nu in Russian conversation  48 Lea Sawicki The Polish multifunctional particle no  81 Matylda Weidner The particle no in Polish talk-in-interaction  104 Yaron Matras and Gertrud Reershemius Functions of a particle in two European minority languages: Nu/no in Yiddish and Romani  132 Yael Maschler and Gonen Dori-Hacohen Hebrew nu: Grammaticization of a borrowed particle from synchronic and diachronic perspectives  162 Leelo Keevallik Estonian no(o)(h) in turns and sequences: Families of function  213 Marja-Leena Sorjonen and Heidi Vepsäläinen The Finnish particle no  243 Auli Hakulinen The word ny(t) as an adverb and a particle in Finnish  281 Andrea Golato Nu(n) in Standard German: Its functions as a temporal adverbial, as an adverbial structuring discourse, and as a modal particle and discourse marker  320 Peter Auer Nu(n) in the Upper Saxonian Vernacular of German  356

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 Contents

Harrie Mazeland The positionally sensitive workings of the Dutch particle nou  377 Helga Hilmisdóttir Nú in Icelandic conversation  409 Anna Lindström Nå in Swedish conversation  442 Mirja Saari and Hanna Lehti-Eklund The Swedish nu: A historical perspective  465 Index  505

Peter Auer and Yael Maschler

The family of NU and NÅ across the languages of Europe and beyond: Structure, function, and history Ejner a ssêjcher hot gehat ajnzumonen ba ejnem a iden a chêjw. Ess is awek chadoschim un chadoisch, un der id zolt nit. Der ssêjcher hot geschriben briwlach, ober ess hot geholfen wi a têjten bankess. Ejnmol, der ssêjcher hot nejtig gedarft hoben die gelt, sogt er sainem a jungerman, er sol ufschrajben a telegram awekzuschiken jenem iden. Der jungerman hot sach awekgesezt un hot ufgeschrieben a telegram fun zen werter. Er wajst dem telegram dem ssêjcher, sogt jener: “Meschuge bisstu, zi woss? Far dem telegram wet men doch musen bazolen finef un sechzig kopikess? A telegram darf men schrajben kurz un scharf. Ot gib a kuk, ich wel schrajben, wesstu sen.” Nemt der ssêjcher un schrajbt a telegram fun Ejn wort: “Nu!” Dem telegram hot der jungermann awekgetrogen af’n potscht. In zwej scho arum kumt an entfer, a telegram karik fun jenem iden. Der ssêjcher macht uf dem telegram, un in telegram is geschtanen nor zwej werter: “Nu nu!” A certain merchant had to collect a debt from a certain Jew. Months and months go by, and the Jew doesn’t pay. The merchant wrote letters, but it was as useful as cupping a corpse. Once, when the merchant needed the money badly, he told one of his apprentice boys to write a telegram to be sent to this Jew. The apprentice boy sat down and wrote a telegram of ten words. He shows the telegram to the merchant, but this one says: “Are you crazy or what? For this telegram we will have to pay 65 kopeks, don’t you know? A telegram needs to be short and to the point. Just have a look, I’ll write it, you will see.” So the merchant goes ahead and writes a telegram of (just) one word: “Nu!” The apprentice boy takes this telegram to the post office. Two hours later comes a reply, a telegram back from this Jew. The merchant opens the telegram, and in the telegram only two words are written: “Nu nu!” (from: Olsvanger 1931: 61, original transliteration1)

1 We thank Dalit Assouline for help with the English translation. Acknowledgments: We would like to thank FRIAS (the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies) for making this volume possible. Its starting point was a FRIAS workshop held at Villa Vigoni in November 2011. Yael Maschler would also like to thank the Finnish Center of Excellence in Research on Intersubjectivity in Interaction at the University of Helsinki for a generous visiting professor fellowship, which made completing this chapter possible. Elin Arbin did a tremendous job in copyediting the manuscripts. The authors contributed equally to this project.

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 Peter Auer and Yael Maschler

1 Introduction Across the languages of middle, northern, and eastern Europe (and, in some cases, beyond) we find one or both of the ‘particles’ NU and NÅ.2 These particles are a perfect example of the interaction of language contact (borrowing) and autochthonous language change. They exist in all modern Germanic and almost all Slavic languages (cf. English now, German nu(n)/na, Dutch nu/nou, Norwegian nå, Danish and Swedish nå, nu, Icelandic nú, Yiddish nu, etc.; Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, Czech, Slovak, Serbian, Polish, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Russian nu/ no), but by no means do they have the same meaning in each of these languages. In addition, the particle has been borrowed into genetically unrelated contact languages such as Hebrew, Finnish, Estonian, and Kazakh, or at least has shaped the usage of similar particles in these languages. The present volume represents an attempt to profit from this unique situation. It has four main purposes: First of all, as one of the main features shared by these languages is the use of NU/NÅ as discourse markers, we would like to contribute to research on discourse markers from an empirical, interactionally-oriented perspective. Over the last two decades, research on discourse markers has made enormous progress. One of the reasons for this progress is the availability of corpora of spoken language, most of which can be searched electronically. Databases for a variety of languages increasingly include spoken language as well. Another reason is the embedding of research on discourse markers in various traditions and theories of research on spoken language and social interaction, such as conversation analysis and discourse analysis. Within these traditions, it is possible to investigate particles which elude a context-free description in terms of lexical semantics. As a consequence, the more impressionistic description of particles found in the older dictionaries have been supplemented by empirically grounded and methodologically sound systematic investigations in many languages. Our second aim is to contribute to contrastive research. By looking at the ‘same’ particle in many languages, we want to sharpen our understanding of the differences in its (discourse) meaning. One interesting sub-problem here is the way in which NU/NÅ have changed their meaning over the course of history in the various languages. While in the Germanic languages there is a shift from adverbial (originally with a temporal, then also several textual and subjective

2 We use capital NU and NÅ as a shorthand for the phonological and phonetic variants found in these languages. When referring solely to their form, we call them ‘particles’. Why we treat them as two different yet related particles will be explained in Section 2.



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meanings) to a discourse marker or modal particle, Slavic nu always seems to have been used as a discourse marker. Our third aim is to shed light on the ‘borrowability’ of discourse markers. It is well known that discourse markers are among the items borrowed first in language contact (e. g., Brody 1987; Maschler 1988, 1994, 2000; Matras 1998). As to NU, there are some cases in which the form of the particle undoubtedly has been borrowed (for instance, into Hebrew), but there are differences in meaning. In other cases, NU may have existed already in the receiving language but may have reshaped its discourse meanings through frequent contact with another NU-language. For instance, while Yiddish nu is generally considered to have been borrowed from Russian, a number of its discourse uses are not easily found among those ascribed to the Russian nu – at least in the dictionaries. Finally, in putting together this volume, and particularly its introduction, we would like to show how interactional linguistics (Selting and Couper-Kuhlen 2001) inspired by conversation analysis can contribute to the cross-linguistic investigation of discourse markers and to the synchronic study of their grammaticization3 (Hopper 1987). We expand here on a functional linguistic approach to the forms and functions of these particles, broadening the concept of ‘form’ to include also the sequential positioning of the particles (i. e., whether they occur in initiative or responsive positions, Schegloff 2007) and their composition (i. e., whether they are stand-alone, turn-initial/-final, or turn-internal elements). Similarly, we broaden the concept of ‘function’ to include the conversational actions (Ford and Thompson 1996) performed in interaction. Employing conversation analytic methodology with its next-turn proof procedure (Schegloff and Sacks 1973: 290) thus enables us to study how particles acquire meaning in a reflexive way within certain sequential and actional environments – both cross-linguistically and, in the case of some of the chapters in this volume, also with regard to the grammaticization of the particles. To the best of our knowledge, this volume is unique in these respects. The languages covered in this volume are typologically varied. There are the Germanic languages Dutch, German (including the Upper Saxonian dialect vernacular), Icelandic, Swedish (Finland-Swedish and Sweden-Swedish), and Yiddish; the Slavic languages Polish and Russian; the Indo-Aryan language Romani; the (Balto-)Finnic languages Estonian and Finnish; as well as the Semitic

3 The more commonly used term is ‘grammaticalization’ (e. g., Hopper and Traugott 2003), but we prefer ‘grammaticization’ (Hopper 1987), in order to avoid any mistaken assumptions concerning the evolution of some ungrammatical form into a grammatical one (for more on this, see Maschler 2009: 33–34).

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language Hebrew. In this introduction, we will also refer to studies on NU/NÅ in other Germanic languages (English, Danish, and Norwegian) for which separate studies exist (cf. Schiffrin 1987: Chapter 8; Heinemann 2016; Andvik 1992; Hasselgård 2006). In this chapter, after clarifying some of the terms used, we introduce the reader to the study of NU/NÅ by focusing on history, including the history of language contact (Section 2), structural features (Section 3), functions (Section 4) (both categories of ‘structure’ and ‘function’ are broadened to include sequential, compositional, and actional aspects, as described above), and grammaticization (Section 5). We refer here mainly to the fourteen studies of this collection. There has been much debate in the field of discourse marker research on the relationship and boundaries between the categories of discourse marker, pragmatic marker, and modal particle.4 As all terms have been used in research on NU/NÅ, we briefly discuss them here. In some linguistic traditions, discourse markers are broadly defined as operating within the realm of the text, pragmatic markers as operating within the realm of interpersonal relations among interlocutors, and modal particles within the realm of the speaker’s stance toward the discourse and/or the interlocutor (e. g., Ghezzi 2014; and the collection of studies in Ghezzi and Molinelli 2014). We do not follow this terminological distinction here. Rather, in the approach taken in this chapter, for an utterance to be considered a discourse marker, first and foremost, it must have a metalingual interpretation in the context in which it occurs (in the sense of Maschler 1994). Rather than referring to the extralingual realm (Becker 1979), discourse markers in this sense refer to the realm of the text, to the interpersonal relations between its participants (or between speaker and text), and/or to the cognitive processes taking place in the minds of the speakers during verbalization (Maschler 2009; Maschler and Schiffrin 2015). Linguists privileging form (mainly syntax), and usually working on Germanic languages, distinguish sharply between modal particles and discourse markers, based, among other things, on the obligatory middle-field position of modal particles in those languages (e. g., Waltereit and Detges 2007). The category of modal particle is distinguished from that of discourse marker by its obligatory clause-internal (middle field) position in those Germanic languages manifesting

4 The term ‘modal particle’ is somewhat problematic as the functions of these particles in the Germanic languages clearly go beyond what is normally understood as modality. German Abtönungspartikel is a better term which, however, does not translate very well into English (‘stance particle’ might be more appropriate).



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this category, as well as by its non-stressability.5 On the other hand, linguists privileging function make no distinction between the two (e. g., Aijmer 2007) “while recognizing that ‘formally’ clause-internal position is the modal particle position” (Traugott 2007: 141). In the present volume, we lean toward a function-privileging approach and suggest that the elements under consideration range on a cline between prototypically modal-particle-like to prototypically discourse-marker-like (cf. Cuenca and Marin 2012).6 Thus, e. g., a token clearly appearing outside the clause and functioning metalingually with respect to textual or interpersonal matters is considered a prototypical discourse marker.7 By contrast, a token appearing inside the clause (e. g., in the middle field of a Germanic language such as German) and functioning metalingually with respect to relations of speaker to text and/or hearer is considered a prototypical modal particle. German nu(n), for instance, is not a prototypical modal particle since it also occurs clause-internally in the front field (see Golato, this volume). But in this position it is also not a prototypical discourse marker, since it is clause-internal. Therefore, it falls somewhere in the middle of the cline, between the two extremes of prototypical modal particlehood and prototypical discourse markerhood (see also Saari and Lehti-Eklund (this volume) on the non-canonical position of Swedish nu). Nevertheless, the use of modal particles is constrained by the surrounding discourse, not just the clause. It is this functional property that, for some linguists, warrants treating them as non-prototypical discourse markers. It should be pointed out that the chapters in this volume are based on different types of data, ranging from conversational data to half-formal interview data, institutional talk, TV productions, and even literary texts (novels). This is due to the varying availability of oral corpora (of spontaneous language use) for the various languages investigated. A systematic study of the range of genres in which NU/NÅ can occur is still a desideratum, even for the better-do­ cumented languages. As discourse markers (and even more so modal particles) have their preferred habitat in conversational language, their use in formal and/

5 For a study contrasting two Germanic NU/NÅ particles, one which has developed into a modal particle (Norwegian nå) and the other which has not (English now), see Hasselgård 2006. 6 For other ‘fuzzy boundary’ approaches to the distinction between discourse markers and modal particles, see Aijmer and Simon-Vandenbergen 2006; Norrick 2007. 7 For an utterance to be considered a prototypical discourse marker in Maschler’s approach, it must also fulfill a structural requirement: It must occur “at intonation-unit initial position, either at a point of speaker change, or, in same-speaker talk, immediately following any intonation contour other than continuing intonation. It may occur after continuing intonation or at nonintonation-unit initial position only if it follows another marker in a cluster” (Maschler 2009: 17).

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or institutional talk and particularly in the written language may be restrained to specific functions. When generalizing over the various languages covered in this volume, this needs to be kept in mind. Also, the studies in this volume do not all follow the same methodological and theoretical framework. The majority of them follow a conversation analytic framework, but other approaches are also present. This applies in particular to the history sections.

2 Historical and language contact aspects of NU/NÅ If we want to take the genealogical metaphor of ‘relatives’ in the title of this book seriously, we need to look into the history of NU/NÅ in order to decide which of the languages covered in this volume are related in terms of descent, whether they are ‘closer’ or ‘more distant relatives’, which are related via language contact, and which are perhaps not related at all. For this purpose, we first discuss the Indo-European languages, since this group is defined by common ancestry, and then turn to the non-Indo-European languages Hebrew, Finnish, and Estonian (the latter two of course belong to the Finnic language family and are therefore also related). There is agreement among scholars of Indo-European that for this protolanguage an adverb *nū̆ can be reconstructed (cf. Vedic nū̆, Avestic nū, Hittite nu, Middle Cymric neu, Classical Greek νύ, νῦν, Lat. nun-c, Lithuanian nũ, nù, Latvian nu, etc.). Already in Proto-Germanic, the adverb (Proto-Germ. *nū) seems to have had a resultative in addition to a temporal reading (‘now, so’).8 NU appears in the first documented stages of most Germanic languages (such as in Old High German, Old Icelandic, Old English, Old Dutch, Old Saxonian) and has remained in these languages up to the present day. (Some internal changes occurred in the course of time, such as /u:/-diphthongization in English and Dutch and /n/-epithesis in most varieties of German.) There can be no doubt that the variants of NU used in these languages are closely related in genealogical terms. Of course, this does not preclude mutual or unidirectional influence due to language contact. In particular, mutual influence between Dutch and German (both Low and High German), influence of (Low) German on Danish and – to a lesser degree – Swedish, as well as mutual influence of Danish and Swedish

8 See the likely, if not undisputed, etymological relationship between *nu ‘now’ and *neu- ‘new’. In any case, the use of NU to refer to something next in a series is very ancient (Paul Hopper, personal communication).



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are possible and even likely. In addition, as Saari and Lehti-Eklund (this volume) show, present-day Finland-Swedish is influenced by its main contact language, Finnish (while the opposite direction of contact prevailed in previous centuries). In sum, we find a huge Germanic-speaking area in Europe which shares an adverb/discourse marker NU with overlapping functions, based on both parallel historical developments and language contact. The particle NÅ also occurs in many Germanic languages. It is generally believed to have had a different precedent than NU in Indo-European, although a (partial) contamination with NU seems almost certain and natural, given the close phonological resemblance between the two (see Lindström’s contribution concerning Swedish nå and Hilmisdóttir’s contribution on Icelandic nù). Contrary to this majority view, Paul (1921) believes that German na is a more recent form derived from nu by a phonological process of lowering. Modern Dutch, German, Danish, and Swedish have both an adverb/discourse marker NU and a discourse marker NÅ. NÅ has no temporal meaning. Modern English has no equivalent of NÅ. This might be seen as evidence for the existence of two separate Proto-Germanic etymons NU and NÅ. But in Norwegian and Icelandic (as well as Faroese), only one word (nå and nú, respectively) is used, combining functions of NÅ and NU (see Hilmisdóttir’s chapter on Icelandic nù), and in German, there is considerable variation in form and meaning between na and nu(n), blurring the boundaries between the two. As Norwegian nå also has a temporal meaning (Andvik 1992), it must go back to *nū̆. Historically, NÅ is therefore difficult to trace. Pokorny (2002) assumes a short form *nā of the pronominal stem *eno- ‘that one’, and links it to the Classical Greek confirmation particles νή (nḗ), ναί (naí) ‘indeed’, as well as to the Latin conjunction nam (‘for’). He tentatively suggests that this Indo-European form might be related to Russian na. But it is hard to find a plausible semantic link between the meaning of this *nā and NÅ in any language in which it occurs today. The same is true for a link between the enclitic particle ne which is lowered to na in some languages. Old High German, for instance, had a particle na which attached to negative questions and appears to be unrelated to present-day na (cf. Pokorny 2002). In sum, it seems rather unlikely that present-day NÅ goes back to *eno-. As the back high vowel /u/ (particularly its short version) tends to lower, and as the discourse marker NÅ is a plausible outcome of a grammaticization chain which starts from a temporal adverb NU (see Section 5 below), we surmise that ((at least) German) na (which tends to lower to /ɔ:/) might have split off from NU just before the 16th century. This would have led to a separation of several of NU’s specialized meanings (such as ‘hedged consent’ or ‘urging’ in Standard German, see Section 4) from the rest by a new form-function coupling distinct from that of NU.

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Let us now turn to the Slavic languages. The etymology of the Slavic variants of NU/NÅ is also uncertain. There is an Old Church Slavonic temporal adverb nyně which is generally considered to be a reflex of IE *nū̆. Modern variants of nyně can be found in Czech (nyní) and Russian (nyne), but it is unclear whether and how nyně developed into Polish or Czech/Slovak no or Russian nu, since no temporal adverb of this phonological form exists in the Slavonic languages (see Sawicki, this volume). Particularly in the case of Polish/Czech/Slovak NÅ, there is no evidence of such a link. Kryk-Kastovsky (1997) claims that Polish no is a clipped form of the adverb ninie, attested until Middle Polish; however, she provides no evidence that ninie was ever used as a discourse marker (which could have been the cause for the clipping); hence this hypothesis appears implausible. Rather, as Sawicki (this volume) shows, nu and no shaded into one another over the course of history of Polish both in phonological form and meaning, with no being attested from the 16th century onward. It seems almost certain that this no was influenced by German na, particularly since it is used most often in the western part of the country (Sawicki mentions Poznan as the center). The same might hold for Czech no. In addition to the purely Germanic NU area in middle and northern Europe, we can therefore identify an even larger, somewhat more eastern NÅ area that includes Swedish, Danish, Dutch, German, Polish, Czech, Slovak, and perhaps other languages, which seems to be based much less on common ancestry than on language contact. Rather, the ‘relatives’ are often adopted or co-opted family members. Compared to the NU area, this area excludes the peripheral areas in the north (Norway, Iceland, Faroe Islands) but extends into West Slavonic. However, this can only be an approximation, and refinements of this surely oversimplified picture will be necessary once more studies of NU/NÅ in additional languages become available. Yiddish has a discourse marker nu, but no temporal adverbial. On the surface, it is very similar to Russian in this regard, and indeed it is often assumed to have been borrowed from this language. However, there are alternative explanations that need to be considered as well. One is that Yiddish nu was borrowed from Polish when this language still used nu in addition to or alternating with no (i. e. until the 19th century); given the fact that a huge portion of the Yiddish-speaking population of Eastern Europe lived in a Polish-speaking area and was not fluent in Russian (remember that Poland extended further into the East and covered Lithuania as well for a long time), this seems a reasonable alternative. Another alternative is that Yiddish underwent an endogenous development and turned its brought-along Germanic temporal adverb into a discourse marker, possibly under the influence of the Slavonic contact languages. Since Yiddish nu is similar in function to Standard German na, but not to Standard German nu(n) (see contributions by Matras and Reershemius and by Golato), this interpretation rests on



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the assumption that at the time when the Ashkenazi Jews left their (Middle High) German-speaking settlement areas in the Rhineland and elsewhere, German had no na yet (otherwise the Yiddish discourse marker would be na); this is compatible with the view expressed above that German na is a later development. Let us finally consider the non-Indo-European languages covered in this volume. In the case of Hebrew, nu obviously is a borrowed discourse marker, although the source of the borrowing is not entirely clear (Russian, Ukrainian, and Yiddish are the candidates, perhaps also Polish; see Maschler and DoriHacohen, this volume). As Maschler and Dori-Hacohen show, the marker seems to have become integrated into Hebrew as it was revived as a spoken language in the late 19th century very quickly, since only the very first sources (around 1900) mark it as a switch into another language. The Finnic languages (Estonian and Finnish are discussed in this volume) have a common Balto-Finnic particle NÅ, but this particle has been strongly influenced during a long history of language contact with the neighboring or coexisting languages, particularly Russian (in the case of Estonian, see Keevallik, this volume, perhaps also Finnish); German (in the case of Estonian); and Swedish (in the case of Finnish, see Sorjonen and Vepsalainen, this volume). (Earlier contact with Germanic languages may have also played a role.) The particle never had an adverbial meaning but is used as a discourse marker exclusively. In addition, there is a distinct temporal adverb ny(t) in Finnish, nüüd in Estonian, which has also turned into a discourse particle (see Hakulinen, this volume), i. e. we here observe an endogenous development of grammaticization parallel to the one found in some of the Germanic languages, from temporal adverb to discourse marker.

3 Structural aspects of NU/NÅ We begin by comparing the structural aspects of the particles covered in this volume in reference to whether the particle is found as a stand-alone, and in terms of its position with respect to the turn and the clause:9

9 The table is compiled on the basis of the chapters in this volume. There are several lacunae. Sometimes the functional description is also partial, i. e. it is restricted to certain functions or positions and neglects others. As a consequence, this introduction is bound to be incomplete as well.

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Table 1: Distribution of NU/NÅ particles in relation to turn and clause Particle Russian nu Polish no Romani no Yiddish nu Hebrew nu Estonian no(o)(h) Finnish no Upper Saxonian German nu Standard German nu(n) Standard German na Dutch nou Icelandic nú Swedish nå10 Swedish nu Finnish ny(t)

Stand- Turn-initial and Turn-internal alone pre-clausal and pre-clausal + + + + + + + + (+) + + + +

+(?) + + + + + + + + + + + +

+ + + + + + + + + + +

Turnfinal

Clauseinternal

+ + + + + + + + + + + +

Examining Table 1, several observations can be made:10 –– All particles except for Finnish ny(t) and Swedish nu (in the variety spoken in Finland) may be employed as stand-alone particles, unaccompanied by additional same-speaker talk. In modern Standard German, the stand-alone particle is usually na, but nu(n) still occurs in some regional varieties such as the Upper Saxonian vernacular. –– All particles except for Finnish ny(t) and Swedish nu may be employed in turn-initial position. As the use of the particles in our collection in standalone position almost always implies their usage in turn-initial position, for ease of presentation, these will be discussed together in Section 4.1 below. –– In none of the Germanic languages except for Yiddish are the particles employed turn-finally, and all non-Germanic languages (except for Finnish) employ the particle in this position. –– In the Germanic languages,11 the particle NU may be employed clause-internally as an adverb and/or a modal particle, while none of the non-Germanic

10 Nå has almost disappeared from Sweden-Swedish (see Lindström, this volume), but has been retained in Finland-Swedish, where it is used in a way closely similar to Finnish no (cf. LehtiEklund 1992; Saari 2009). 11 The one exception here is Swedish nå.



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languages employ the particle in this manner. The one exception is Finnish ny(t). These structural observations point clearly to a divide between the Germanic languages vs. the non-Germanic languages, with Yiddish being the exception in that Yiddish nu is employed more similarly to the particles in the non-Germanic group. The observations in Table (1) also point to the external status of Finnish ny(t) and (mainly Finland-) Swedish nu, which has been influenced by Finnish ny(t) through language contact (Saari and Lehti-Eklund, this volume).

4 Functional aspects of NU/NÅ Despite many similarities in function that will be drawn here from the various studies in the collection, it is important to note from the outset that ‘corresponding’ particles in two different languages hardly ever have fully identical functions (even though in some cases, such as Finnish ny(t) and Finland-Swedish nu, this state of complete functional overlap may almost be reached; cf. Hakulinen and Saari 1995). In other words, although the form of the particle may have been borrowed or influenced by similar particles in the contact languages, its functions may not all have been borrowed as well. As the form was borrowed into the language by more and more speakers, it acquired a profile of uses particular to the new language and culture. Nevertheless, there are functional similarities, which we will sketch in this section. We organize the discussion of the numerous functions of NU/NÅ according to the position occupied by the particle: functions of stand-alone as well as turninitial but pre-clausal discourse markers in sequentially initiative and responsive positions (Section 4.1), functions of turn-initial discourse markers occurring in pre-clausal position (Section 4.2), functions of discourse markers in turn-final position (4.3), and finally, functions of clause-internal particles (Section 4.4). We therefore follow the inverse direction of the most plausible grammaticization route which will be discussed in Section 5. The following overview only mentions and gives examples of the most common functions of NU/NÅ discussed in this book.

4.1 Functions of stand-alone as well as turn-initial but pre-clausal NU/NÅ When the particles NU/NÅ occur as a stand-alone or in turn-initial but preclausal position, they are prototypical discourse markers (Maschler 2009: 17). The functions of these discourse markers can be further differentiated according

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 Peter Auer and Yael Maschler

to the sequential position in which the stand-alone discourse marker or the turn which it introduces occurs. As a consequence of their particular sequential position, these discourse markers have a sequentially defined function. However, in this sequentially defined context, they may additionally or even predominantly assume another function, i. e. that of expressing some kind of stance (Du Bois 2007). We take ‘stance’ to refer to relations of speaker to other discourse parti­ cipants, as well as relations of speaker to text (of either epistemic or affective12 nature). The stance-related meaning of the particle is both responsive to this sequential position and a practice for framing the action to be performed.

4.1.1 NU/NÅ in initiative sequential position Urging/prompting The function of NU/NÅ which is shared by the greatest number of languages covered in this volume has to do with urging (‘prompting’) a participant in further developing an ongoing/upcoming action (either verbal or nonverbal). In this case, the discourse marker occurs in an initiative sequential position and elicits or prompts a particular next activity that is not made explicit. The urging function is found in all particles covered in this volume except for Finland-Swedish nu, Finnish no, Standard German nu(n) (where this function is usually taken over by na), and Finnish ny(t). When urging NU/NÅ occurs as a stand-alone, it is generally part of a larger than two-paired sequence. For example, in the following segment from the Israeli ‘Survivor’ reality TV show, Itay asks Efrat why she thinks him to be ‘the biggest operator’ among the group. Efrat is in the middle of answering when Itay hastens her to get on with her argument by employing a stand-alone nu token (line 19): Extract (1) (Maschler and Dori-Hacohen, this volume): 16 Efrat: ....shta--yim, ‘two--,’ 17

'ani xoshevet Itay 'e--m, ‘I think Itay uh--m,’

18

...shegam batkufa shel Kaniba, that also during the era of Kaniba ‘that also during the Kaniba era,’

12 Following Couper-Kuhlen, the term ‘affect’ will be used as “a general label for all kinds of displayed heightened involvement in conversation” (2009: 94).



The family of NU and NÅ across the languages of Europe and beyond 

 13

19 Itay: ..nu? 20 Efrat: ...lo. ‘no.’ 21 Itay: ...../dabri/. ‘/speak/.’ 22 Efrat:

'ani 'adaber baketsev sheli--, ‘I’ll speak at my own pa--ce,’

23 Itay: ..dabri, ‘speak,’ 24

dabri, ‘speak,’

25 Efrat:

vekshe'ani 'ertse lehotsi mila--, ‘and when I want to get a wo--rd out,’ vaksha. ‘please.’

26 Itay:

27 Efrat: 'ani 'otsi mila. ‘I’ll get a word out.’ 28 Itay: vaksha. {ironically} ‘please.’ tagid li nu, 29 Efrat: ...'al don’t say to me nu ‘don’t say ‘nu’ to me,’ 30

ve'al tezarez 'oti. ‘and don’t rush me.’

Efrat’s response to this hastening in lines 20, 22, 25, 27, culminating in lines 29–30 ‘don’t say ‘nu’ to me, and don’t rush me’, clearly spells out the urging function she senses in this token of nu. In this particular case, the nu does not receive an adequate second as a response. Note that the nu occurs in the course of an answer to a question and that its meaning (in the sense of an urge to finally deliver the answer) cannot be understood without this embedding: It is both forward- and backward-oriented. NU/NÅ may also be the first part of a two-part turn in which the second part spells out the action to be done, as for example in Estonian noh lase aga kuulda (‘noh, tell me’) (Keevallik, this volume), Hebrew nu, tasbir! (‘nu, explain!’, ­Maschler 2009: 57), Polish no siadaj (‘no sit’) (Sawicki, this volume), Yiddish nu, kim šoyn! (‘nu, come already!’) (Assouline 2011), and Upper Saxonian German nu:

14 

 Peter Auer and Yael Maschler

Extract (2) (Auer, this volume): nU kommt doch en=moment REIN? NU come PARTICLE for-a moment in ‘NU come in for a moment?’

The urging function is less commonly found when the particle prefaces a turn which does not explicitely spell out the action urged. One example comes from Sweden-Swedish, in which nå urges the co-participant to answer a question, but no utterance such as ‘tell me’ follows nå: Extract (3) (Lindström, this volume): Nå: har du något försla:g¿ Nå: have you any suggestion ‘Nå: do you have a suggestion?’

In addition to its urging function which is shaped by its sequential position, NU/ NÅ often also has a stance-related functional component, which is located in the affect dimension. A very common affect accompanying urging, which was found for Hebrew nu (Maschler 2003), Yiddish nu (Matras and Reershemius, this volume), Russian nu (Bolden, this volume), Polish no (Weidner, this volume; Sawicki, this volume), Sweden-Swedish nå (Lindström, this volume), Dutch nou (Mazeland, this volume), and Standard German nun (Helbig 1988, cited in Golato, this volume) is impatience, as seen in Extract (1). Efrat’s response to this nu (lines 20, 22, 25, 27, 29–30) attests the rude affect of impatience she associates with the urging function of the token. Maschler and Dori-Hacohen (this volume) argue that certain recurring affects accompanying Hebrew nu become dissociated from their sequential position, so that the particle’s affective function supersedes and nu comes to function as an affective token that colors the utterance it accompanies with emotions ranging from humorous mockery to contempt (see Section 5.2 below on grammaticization). Finally, it can be noted that in most of the languages in which the particle is employed for urging another, it also functions to urge oneself,13 particularly in self-repair contexts such as word searches, as in the following Dutch example, in which nou is used as a repair preface:

13 Of the languages in which the particle functions to urge another, its use for self-urging was not found in the studies of Romani no, Upper Saxonian German nu, Icelandic nú, and SwedenSwedish nå, but this may be due to lacking data.



The family of NU and NÅ across the languages of Europe and beyond 

 15

Extract (4) (Mazeland, this volume): en- je krijgt- nOu: (.) van allerlei vrE:zen. and- you getNOU of all-kinds fears ‘and- you get- (.) NOU all kinds of fears.’

In this case, the discourse marker is of course not part of a sequential pattern but occurs within the turn of the current speaker. NU/NÅ to mark a ‘next step’ as a consequence of prior talk In its urging function, NU/NÅ elicits or prompts another participant’s doing of a next action (if we disregard the self-urging usage of the discourse marker in self-repair). However, the same particles are also used by the same speaker to mark their own next utterance as sequentially or topically projected or at least expectable, and hence a consequence of preceding talk. Here, too, the transition marked by NU/NÅ has a double orientation: On the one hand, the discourse marker ‘looks back’ and takes the preceding talk as the basis on which the subsequent talk will be organized. On the other hand, the marker ‘looks forward’ and prefaces this new talk in turn-initial position. For instance, in the following example from Finnish, speaker Anni (line 13) introduces her turn in which she moves into the closing section of the telephone conversation in this way: Extract (5) (Finnish, from Sorjonen and Vepsalainen, this volume; at the end of a negotiation regarding when Anni and her partner should come and visit Essi) 01 Anni: O-n-k-s viide-lt liian myöhää? be-3sg-q-cli five-abl too late ‘Is five too late’ 02

(.)

me 03 Essi: Eiku viide-lt o-nsg just hyvä aika koska prt five-abl be-3sg prt good time because we ‘No five is just a good time because we’ 04

oote-tt-i-i tei-t viidel-t, wait-pst-pst-4 you.pl-par five-abl ‘were expecting you at five’

05

(0.4)

06 Anni: [Okei.][ joo.] ‘Okay. yeah.’ 07 Essi: [(-) ][(-) ] niinku tähdä-tt-i-i sii-hen et, (.) mei-l, prt aim.pas-pst-4 dem3-ill prt we- ade ‘(-) (-) we were like aiming at that so, we have’

16 

 Peter Auer and Yael Maschler

08

(.) o-n viel vähä siivous keskej be-3sg still little.bit cleaning unfinished ‘(.) the cleaning still a bit unfinished’

09

ja sit pitää käy-dä kaupa-ssa mut, prt then have.to visit-inf store-ine but ‘and we have to go do the shopping but,’

10

(0.3)

11 Anni: Okei. ‘Okay.’ 12

(.)

sit viide-lt. 13 Anni:  → ↑No me tul-la-a prt we come-pas-4 then five.abl ‘↑NO we’ll come at five then.’ 14 (0.5) 15 Essi: No kiva. prt nice ‘NO nice.’

Anni presents line 13 as a consequence of the negotiation that has taken place before, signaling that she considers this issue settled. No therefore has a concluding and hence terminating function. At the same time, the marker introduces a turn which moves into the closing section of the call. After a longish negotiation sequence, this transition is presented as the projectable next activity, which is now being achieved. The transition is therefore both content-based and sequentially relevant. The various types of transitions marked by NU are described in detail in Mazeland’s paper on Dutch in this volume. In Dutch, the disjuncture between previous talk and new talk in which the discourse marker operates can be much stronger than in the previous example. In extreme cases, it can even span different interactional episodes. In the following example, Hetty opens the topical section of a call directly with nouh: Extract (6) (from Mazeland, this volume; ‘Return call, sisters’) 01 Hetty:

jAh. met ↓Hetty. hallo:. yes. with Hetty. hallo. ‘yes. this is Hetty. hello.’ 0.3

02 Ella: hai! hi. 0.4



The family of NU and NÅ across the languages of Europe and beyond 

 17

03 Hetty:→ nouh. is ‘t goed gekom’n? NOU is it well come? ‘NOU. has it gone all right?’ (0.4) 04 Ella: jah hoo:r, yes prt ‘yes it did.’

This nouh introduces the phone call by linking it back to a previous phone call two days earlier in which they had been talking about shopping for clothes. In line 03 Hetty inquires about the success of this shopping activity. Nu as an opener for an interactional encounter is also frequently found in German (nun and na), in Russian (nu, cf. Bolden, in this volume), in Hebrew (nu), and in Yiddish; cf. the following literary example: Extract (7) (Yiddish, from Olsvanger 1931, 3–4, a collection of Yiddish droll stories) (a Yiddish villager gives his children to a teacher – rebe, ‘rabbi’ – who is supposed to teach them polite manners) Der rebe is masskim gewén un hot em zugesogt, zu lernen die kinder derech-erez. In a halb jor arum is der tate gekumen in schtot, is er gegangen sen di kinder. Fregt er dem reben: “Nu, woss is mit majne kinder?” Sogt der rebe: “Ganz gut, sey lernen sach ganz fajn.” ((etc.)) ‘The rabbi agreed and promised him to teach the children polite manners. Half a year later, the father came into town and went to see his children. He asks the rabbi: ‘NU, what about my children?’. The rabbi says: ‘Quite well, they teach themselves quite nicely’…’

Again, the time span which is bridged by nu comprises two subsequent interactional episodes in an interactional history. The turn-initial nu is used to refer back to the previous encounter and also to present the question which starts the new encounter as a consequence of the contract between the Jewish villager and the rabbi. In Finnish, Estonian, and Finland-Swedish, NÅ is often used in telephone openings to preface the caller’s first turn. As this conventionalized opening still depends on the existence of a history of interaction between the interactants, it can be seen as another variant of the backward-plus-forward-oriented NU/NÅ, marking the transition into a next interactional episode which is linked back to the previous history of interaction. In their function of prompting, inviting, and marking the doing of a next but already expected activity which at the same time ties back to a previous action,

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 Peter Auer and Yael Maschler

the discourse markers NU/NÅ seem to occur in most Germanic languages, as well as in Russian, Estonian, and Finnish. In the case of the Germanic languages, it is not difficult to see that this NU/NÅ in initiative sequential position is still related to the temporal adverbial NU from which the markers originated. The particle establishes reference to the present discourse time in order to create discontinuity between what was done or said before and what will be done or said next. As Schiffrin (1987: 23) argues, this usage of “now marks a speaker’s progression through discourse time by displaying attention to an upcoming idea unit, orientation, and/or participant framework”.

4.1.2 NU/NÅ in responsive sequential position ‘Go-ahead’ In its function which is most similar to initiative-position urging, NU/NÅ in a responsive sequential position can be used as a ‘go-ahead’, i. e., for granting permission to perform an action. In this case, the discourse marker is a response to a request by another participant to perform some action. At the same time, it projects a next, third action by the first speaker. It has been documented for Hebrew nu, Yiddish nu (Assouline 2011), and Finnish no, and also holds for Polish (no),14 Estonian (no),15 and Finland-Swedish (nå);16 cf. the following example: Extract (8) (Sorjonen and Vepsalainen, this volume): 01 E:

Mut ↑arvaa mitä,= ‘But ↑guess what,=ʼ

02 M:  →  =No::?

As in the case of the ‘urging’ function (see Section 4.1.1), sometimes an impatient affective stance accompanies the ‘go-ahead’ function as well. (Emphatic) affirmation When the discourse markers NU/NÅ occur in sequentially responsive position, they may simply express affirmation, as in the following example from a Polish phone conversation:

14 Matylda Weidner, personal communication. 15 Leelo Keevallik, personal communication. 16 Mirja Saari and Hanna Lehti-Eklund, personal communication.



The family of NU and NÅ across the languages of Europe and beyond 

 19

Extract (9) (Pisarkowa 1975; Sawicki, personal communication)17

we wtorek też nie przychodzić do szkoły? ‘shouldn’t I go to school on Tuesday too?’

→ No. ‘Yes.’

Ty masz katar? ‘Do you have a runny nose?’

→ No. ‘Yes.’

Bo tak jakoś dziwnie nosem pociągasz... ‘Because you sniffle so funny...’

In the affirmation function, we find the discourse marker also in turn-initial position, as in the following example: Extract (10) (Sawicki, this volume) – […] jak chcesz, to ci mogę pokazać suknię do komunii –szepnęła. – Długą? → – No, do samej ziemi […].   (K114) →

– […] if you want I can show you [my] Communion dress – she whispered. – A long one? – N, floor-length […].

The affirmation function of NU/NO is attested only in the Central-European (and some Eastern) regions (Polish no, Romani no, Upper Saxonian German nu, and some Russian dialects [Bolden, this volume, footnote 1]). As in the case of the urging and go-ahead functions often accompanied by the stance of impatience (see above) in addition to affirmation, the discourse marker often signals some kind of stance as well. For instance, Weidner (this volume) argues that Polish affirming no in second (or third, see below) position can point to the already-known status of the information contained in that speaker’s turn. It therefore serves to express epistemic stance. It explicitly marks an informing as ‘no news’, thus qualifying it as something that the recipient knows indepen-

17 Extracts (9) and (10) are taken from a novel, hence the names of the speakers are not explicitly given.

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 Peter Auer and Yael Maschler

dently, and whose mentioning is therefore redundant, as in the following example from a doctor-patient interaction: Extract (11) (from Weidner, this volume; doctor/patient interaction) 01 D:

To przed tym cierpnięciem i- (0.2) przed= it before this numbnessINST and before ‘Unfortunately: the only way to prevent this=’

02

=tą martwo:tą tej ręki niestety: (.)= this deathINST this hand unfortunately ‘=numbness and- (0.2) this dea:d-like=’

03

=można się obronić tylko i wyłącznie, (.) przywiazując= can3SG R defendINF only and exclusively tiePrt ‘=feeling of this hand(.) is to ∅, (.) tie (the) hand=’

04

=sobie rękę[: self handACCQ ‘=down[:’

→ 05 P:

[NO właśnie. PART just ‘[NO exactly.’

Weidner argues that the patient’s no (here in combination with właśnie ‘just’) not only confirms the doctor’s statement, but also marks the doctor’s informing as something already known to the patient. Similarly, Russian nu may be employed in response to a question to indicate that the solicited information is already known to the questioner, as in the following example: Extract (12) (from Bolden, this volume): 04 VIC:

Malik s nami guljal/ NAME with us walked ‘Malick went out with us’

Dimy tam druz”ja?/=da,/ 05 GREG: N:u panjatna/=U PRT understood with NAME there friends yes ‘NU I see/ Dima has friends there right?’ da:/ Pa klassu/ 06 VIC: → Nu well yes in class ‘NU yes/ from school’



The family of NU and NÅ across the languages of Europe and beyond 

 21

In the midst of Vic’s report on Dima and his friends, Greg attempts to expand on the topic by asking whether Dima even has friends. Bolden shows that Vic’s nu-prefaced response resists the question in the sense that it inquires about a just-mentioned fact, which therefore should have been known to the questioner. Similar epistemic uses of nu are found in the Upper Saxonian variety of German and in Hebrew, but also in Finnish and Finland-Swedish nå.18 ­Maschler and Dori-Hacohen (this volume) argue that such tokens of Hebrew nu often acquire an affective stance-related function (‘keying’ in Hymes’ 1986 sense) in addition to the epistemic function, such as mocking or belittling the interlocutor for not having realized something about the previous discourse (see Maschler and Dori-Hacohen, this volume, Example 6). Appreciative affiliation In some languages, stand-alone or turn-initial NU/NÅ as a second-pair part may be employed to convey affective stance. For instance, Mazeland (this volume) reports that stand-alone Dutch nou can “acclaim the position taken or implied by the prior speaker”, as in the following example: Extract (13) (from Mazeland, this volume) 01 Els:

en daar was Wallage ‚t dus w- dand there was Wallage it so w- d‘and Wallage thus did with ag- d- ’

02

daar was Wallage ‚t weer niet mee eens. there was Wallage it again not with agree. ‘Wallage didn’t agree with this in turn.’

03 Mina: eh! (0.5) 04 Els: nee. no. (0.3) 05 Mina: → [nou. NOU. (…) hè? 08 Mina: (wat ‘n) dom (what a) stupid PRT ‘how stupid, isn’t it?’

18 Mirja Saari and Hanna Lethi-Eklund, personal communication.

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 Peter Auer and Yael Maschler

Mazeland notes that with nou of line 05, Mina affiliates with the prior speaker’s stance concerning a ‘scandalous injustice’ described in line 02 without yet explicating her evaluative position, a matter which she accomplishes later on, in line 08. NU/NÅ in third sequential position When responsive NU/NÅ occurs in third sequential position – either as a standalone or as a turn-initial discourse marker – its dominant function is that of reconfirming. This function is of course similar to the function of (emphatic) confirmation in second position, and it shares with the latter a superimposed epistemic stance-marking. Two very similar examples come from Polish (Weidner, this volume) and Upper Saxonian German (Auer, this volume): Extract (14) (Weidner, this volume) 01 P:

Chcia:łem iść do pra:cy:, i: (0.3)= want1SGPT goINF to workGEN and ‘(I) wa:nted to leave for wo:r:k, a:nd (0.3)=’

02

=padłem w drzwi. O:. fall1SGPT in doorPLACC EXCL ‘=(I) fell into (the) door. O:.’

03

(0.2)

04 D:

I u:pat Pan. Ta:k¿ and fall3SGPT mister yes ‘And youV fe:ll down. Ye:s¿’

→ NO:_ 05 P: PART ‘NO:_’

Extract (15) (Auer, this volume) 01 B:

da bin=isch ja NOCHmal im kranghaus gewesen. ‘then I went to the hospital again.’

02

°h habe is es NOCHma DURSCHgedrückt worden;= ‘have, ((it)) was straightened again;’

03

hier das KNIE mit [narKOse]. ‘here the knee under anaesthesia.’

04 I:

[und ‘and’

] (-)



The family of NU and NÅ across the languages of Europe and beyond 

05

a:ch; was=denn; NOCHmal; ‘oh; really; again;’

06

[damit=s GRAde (end[lich wird). ‘to straighten it (at last).’

07 B:

→ [ NU

In both examples, the interlocutor repeats a statement made by the speaker, who then reconfirms it with no in Polish and with nu in Upper Saxonian German. Weidner claims that since the patient in Extract (14) had already said that he fell, the doctor’s question in line 04 solicits reconfirmation of a proposition that has already been stated and is therefore redundant; the same holds for Extract (15) where the interviewer (I) repeats the interviewee’s (B) telling that she had to go once more to the hospital to get her knee ‘straightened’, which leads to B’s reconfirmation with nu (line 07). Since the function of affirmation is not found in Standard German nu(n), Auer (this volume) suggests that this shared function is possible evidence of Polish influence on this variety of German. Matras and Reershemius (this volume, p. 155) suggest that the same affinity in function between Romani no and Polish no “support[s] the hypothesis of fusion of procedures within speakers’ Polish-Romani multilingual repertoire, and thus the contact-susceptibility of the marker”. Surprise Much more frequent among the functions reported in this volume for responsive NU/NÅ-prefaced utterances or reponsive stand-alone NU/NÅ are those that indicate some sort of non-alignment between participants. A very weak case of such non-alignment occurs in responsive turns in which the recipient is surprised by the speaker’s telling. As a stand-alone discourse marker, Icelandic nú may serve this function: Extract (16) (from: Hilmisdóttir, this volume; A = Arnar, the caller; E = Erna, the callee) 01 A:

°Hvert ertu að fara,° where be.2+you to go ‘where are you going?’

02

(0.5)

03 E:

>É er að fara:< í hérna: Skaftafell o: Jökulsárlón I be.3 to go in prt Skaftafell-acc and Jökulsárlón-acc ‘I’m going to ehm Skaftafell and Jökulsárlón’

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 Peter Auer and Yael Maschler

04

og þa allt, and it all ‘and all that’

05

(0.6)

06 A:

→ N↑↓ú

07 E:

J↓á:: prt ‘yeah’

08 A:

Með hverjum ertu að fara, with who-dat be.2+you to go ‘who are you going with?’

Nú here is used by Arnar to indicate that she is surprised by her friend Erna’s news that she is going to leave on a relatively long trip. In this sense, it conveys epistemic stance. Compared to a simple acknowledgement token, this discourse marker makes it clear that this comes unexpectedly for Arnar, but according to Hilmisdóttir (this volume) it also marks affective stance vis-à-vis this telling which is received in more negative (skeptical) than positive terms. Surprise/bewilderment was one of the affects conveyed by Hebrew responsive nu (a use imported from the contact languages Ukrainian and/or Yiddish, as testified in literary Hebrew texts from around 1900) in the very early days of the revival of spoken Hebrew toward the end of the 19th century. This use has disappeared entirely from the modern language (Maschler and Dori-Hacohen, this volume). For example, in the following extract from an early Modern Hebrew novel by a Ukrainian-born Jewish author published in 1904, the narrator, a young woman, is attending a social gathering of some wealthy Mr. Gildin with her male friend, who changes his mind immediately upon entering the room: Extract (17) (from Maschler and Dori-Hacohen, this volume): 01

le'ozneynu higi'a kol xaveri ro'ed, to our ears reached voice my friend shivering ‘the shivering voice of my friend reached our ears,’

02

megamgem bimhirut mevulbala: stuttering in rapidness confused ‘stuttering in confused rapidness:’

03

'anoxi... be'etsem...silxu na... siba bilti tsfuya... I actually excuse please reason not expected ‘I...actually...please excuse...an unexpected reason...’



04 05

The family of NU and NÅ across the languages of Europe and beyond 

 25

lo 'uxal lihiyot hayom... not will be able to be today ‘I won’t be able to be here today...’ mar gildin betimahon → - nu! – huka nu! was struck Mr. Gildin with bewilderment ‘- nu! – Mr. Gildin was struck with bewilderment’

be'et 'axat 'imanu. 06 at time one with us ‘at the same time as we were.’ (Gnessin 1904: 6)

We find here the author’s interpretation of Mr. Gildin’s nu response to the friend’s announcement that he must leave (lines 03–04): It is followed by punctuation indicating that this was uttered emphatically by Mr. Gildin as he ‘was struck with bewilderment’ (line 05). Of all 163 nu tokens found in casual conversation ­(Maschler 2009) and in Maschler and Dori-Hacohen’s radio corpus, not a single one functions to convey surprise/bewilderment. Furthermore, as Maschler and Dori-Hacohen note, this use seems non-nativelike to a Modern Hebrew ear. This is a fascinating example of the shaping of a borrowed element by the newly emerging (Israeli) culture. Not quite the preferred response In several languages discussed in this volume, NU/NÅ-introduced turns signal to the previous speaker that the response which is going to be delivered now will not quite be the preferred one. Bolden (this volume, p. 56) argues that this is one of the main functions of nu in Russian, i. e. to “alert the recipient that what is to come is not an unproblematic, expected, or appropriate next”. A typical example is the following: Extract (18) (from Bolden, this volume) ((Mark has reported on an alimony-related investigation into his girlfriend’s exhusband who has been located by Mark’s lawyer. Rima suggests an assessment of this report.)) 01 RIM:

£Udalos’ razve¿dat’£/ managed scout ‘((They)) managed to scout it out?’

02

(0.8)

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 Peter Auer and Yael Maschler

03 MAR:

Da:/ yes

04 RIM:

N(h)u::_ Xarasho/ minor category” (Hopper and Traugott 2003: 107), where ‘minor category’ includes such items as prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliaries, pronouns, and demonstratives, i. e., closed-class grammatical categories. Ferrara has argued that the category of discourse markers, too, should be considered a ‘minor category’ because it constitutes a relatively closed-class grammatical category (1997: 371). As we have seen (Section 2), there is general agreement among scholars of Indo-European concerning reconstruction of a temporal adverb *nū̆ meaning ‘now’. We argue below that in most if not all of the languages in our collection in which NU functions as both a clause-internal temporal adverb and a discourse marker – i. e., the Germanic languages excluding Yiddish – there is evidence of the following grammaticization path leading from Hopper and Traugott’s intermediate category of adverb to the minor category of discourse marker:

clause-internal adverb > discourse marker

20 Hopper and Traugott use the term ‘grammaticalization’; see footnote 3.

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 Peter Auer and Yael Maschler

This grammaticization path is reminiscent of the itinerary first described in Traugott (1995) for English indeed, in fact, besides, and then for several other discourse markers in a variety of languages (e. g., English anyway [Ferrera 1997], English now [Aijmer 2002], French là (‘there’) [Smith 2006], Portuguese dai (lit. ‘from there’) [Mendes, do Nascimento, and Fernanda 2007], Hebrew be'emet (‘really, actually, indeed’, lit. ‘in truth’) [Maschler and Estlein 2008], Hebrew bekitsur (‘anyway’) [Maschler 2009], and Japanese amari (‘extremely’) [Shinzato 2014]). Although not etymologically related to NU, we find evidence of a similar grammaticization path for Finnish ny(t), which begins even further back than the intermediate category of clause-internal adverb in Hopper and Traugott’s (2003) cline, in the major category of noun (the proto-Finnic nominal stem nyky‘present’, ‘now(ness)’), and ends in a category that Hakulinen (this volume) terms ‘discourse particle’, although she prefers the term ‘modal particle’ (Hakulinen, this volume, footnote 2):

noun > clause-internal adverb > discourse/modal particle

According to Hakulinen (this volume), the clause-internal temporal adverb ny(t) (‘now’) existed already in proto-Finnic, but the later development into a discourse particle happened only in Finnish. Hakulinen (this volume) presents diachronic evidence of this grammaticization path for Finnish ny(t). Saari and Lehti-Eklund (this volume) present diachronic evidence of a similar grammaticization path for Finland-Swedish nu (which they term a ‘discourse marker’). For the grammaticization path from adverb to discourse marker, synchronic evidence can be deduced from the contributions by Mazeland on Dutch nou, Golato on German nu(n), Auer on Upper Saxonian German nu(n), and Hilmisdóttir on Icelandic nú, as well as previous work on English now (Schiffrin 1987; Aijmer 2002) and Norwegian nå (Andvik 1992). Synchrony is of importance here, because close synchronic analysis of corpora often shows that a particular token performs more than a single function simultaneously. Such ambiguous tokens are particularly revealing, because they shed light on how a particular element might come to serve more than a single function, thus suggesting the functional itinerary followed by it (cf. Aijmer 2002: 60, 63; Maschler 2009: 33–36). Comparisons with ‘equivalent’ discourse markers across languages can then be made in order to support the grammaticization path suggested, because grammatical morphemes “tend to be polysemous in similar ways across languages and to undergo similar paths of development as a result of human discourse and interactions” (Hopper and Traugott 2003: 33). The similar grammaticization paths of nu and its relatives in the Germanic languages, as well as of ny(t) in Finnish, which can be deduced



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from the studies in this collection, is one of the contributions of our volume to comparative studies of discourse markers as well as grammaticization studies. Correlated with de-categorialization is an increase in the scope of the grammatical element (Traugott and Dasher 2002):

scope within clause > scope over clause > scope over discourse

Adverbial (temporal) NU has scope within the clause as an adverbial complement of the predicate, and discourse marker/modal particle NU has scope over the discourse. We have seen that in the cases in which NU functions as a (non-prototypical) modal particle, it occurs within the clause, but its scope is larger than over the predicate. To the extent that its scope is over the clause, in addition to over the surrounding discourse (see Section 1), we perhaps have evidence of an intermediate stage in which NU has scope over the clause. What is clear is that in German and Dutch, but apparently not in Finland-Swedish, in the later stage of grammaticization, NU has left the clause and moved to its left periphery to become a discourse marker. Traugott and Dasher proposed a model for the semantic change involved in grammaticization. As forms become increasingly grammaticized, there is “a tendency toward metatextual meaning, or more specifically, a shift from […] ‘the world being talked about’ to ‘the speaker’s organization of that world in the act of speaking’” (Traugott and Dasher 2002: 40). As mentioned in Section 2, already in Proto-Germanic NU seems to have had a textual as well as referential (temporal) meaning, i. e., already then there had been a shift from ‘the world being talked about’ (i. e., ‘now’ in the extralingual world) toward “the speaker’s organization of that world in the act of speaking” (Traugott and Dasher 2002: 40) with respect to the structure of the text (i. e., ‘now’ in the text). Saari and Lehti-Eklund (this volume) show that the oldest non-temporal text-structuring functions (e. g., introducing a new section) of Old Swedish nu exist in 13th-century medieval legal texts, and Auer (ms) mentions textual (resultative) meanings of nu in Old High German.21 We see here a metaphorical shift from the propositional to the ‘metalinguistic’ (Traugott 1988; Traugott and König 1991) following Traugott and Dasher’s non-metatextual > metatextual tendency in grammaticization (Traugott and Dasher 2002: 40). In the case of the temporal adverb NU, whose origo is the speaker, temporal deixis in the extralingual world was extended to temporal deixis in the text (cf. Bronzwaer

21 Hakulinen (this volume) mentions text-structuring functions of Finnish ny(t) in a 1548 Finnish translation of the Bible, but she attributes them to an influence of German nun.

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1975; Schiffrin 1987; and Aijmer 2002 for English now; Bertin 2001 for French maintenant.). As forms become more and more grammaticized, in addition to the non-metatextual > metatextual tendency, Traugott proposes an increasing focus on interpersonal aspects involving relations of speaker to text (subjectivity), and subsequently of speaker to other discourse participants (intersubjectivity). Meanings become “increasingly based in the speaker’s subjective belief/state/ attitude toward the proposition” (Traugott 1989: 35), as well as in the speaker’s internal cognitive state (Traugott 1989: 35), and then more intersubjective – i. e., increasingly more involved in “the explicit expression of the speaker’s/writer’s attention to the ‘self’ of addressee/reader in both an epistemic sense […], and in a more social sense” (Traugott 2003a: 128). Saari and Lehti-Eklund (this volume) show that for Swedish nu, the earliest subjective functions are found in 17th-century letters and plays, i. e., later than the text-structuring functions (see above). However, they acknowledge the fact that due to the lack of historical spoken data, it is difficult to know when and how the various present-day non-temporal uses of (Finland-) Swedish nu began to develop. Auer (ms), on the other hand, detects subjective uses already for Old High German nun. Hakulinen (this volume) shows that Finnish ny(t) carrying affective stance – and therefore subjective – is attested already in the traditional Finnish oral poetry, which is estimated to go back 2,500 years (although the poems were not registered in written form until the Kalevala epic in the 19th century). She concludes that “[s]ome kind of affect or stance has been part of the particle use of ny(t) from early on – at first when it was used in combination with other particles, and later in some syntactic and rhetorical constructions”. Traugott’s (1982) original ordering of unidirectional meaning change of

propositional > (textual) > expressive (subjective)

proved to be too strong (e. g., Heine, Claudi, and Hünnemeyer 1991: 190–191; Brinton 1996) and was later revised to tendencies, such that the tendency toward increasing metatextual meaning does not necessarily precede the tendency toward subjective meaning (1989). Both Auer’s findings on Old High German nun and Hakulinen’s findings on Finnish ny(t) support this. The epistemic and affective stance-related discourse marker functions of NU in the Germanic languages in our collection (other than Yiddish) are of course a further instantiation of this process of subjectification. The chapters on these languages also demonstrate Traugott’s claims concerning intersubjectification (Traugott 2003) – not only because clause-internal uses of NU are responsive to the interlocutor’s previous turns (see, e. g., Mazeland [this volume] and Golato



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[this volume]), but because of the inherently intersubjective nature of the discourse marker uses of NU. These include, for example, urging the interlocutor, allowing the interlocutor to go ahead, and, of course, the various directly stancerelated functions – both epistemic and affective. As we have seen, this involves not only relations of speaker to text, but also relations of speaker to other discourse participants (cf. Aijmer 2002: 87–95 for English now). We see that in the case of NU, temporal deixis in the extralingual world – whose origo is the speaker and therefore already inherently subjective as a temporal adverb – was extended not only to temporal deixis in the text but also to the subjective point of view of the speaker. By nature of its responsiveness to the interlocutor and his/her actions in the interaction, it has also gained intersubjective functions. Besides de-categorialization, increase in scope, subjectification, and intersubjectification, grammaticization of NU manifests several other features associated with grammaticization: –– Semantic loss (Gabelentz 1891; Lehman 1995 [1982]; Hopper and Traugott 2003): The temporal semantics of the adverb become bleached as it grammaticizes into a discourse marker. –– Pragmatic strengthening (Hopper and Traugott 2003): NU changes from being more to less referential, moving away from its concrete (temporal) reference toward increasingly general and abstract reference and becoming more metalingual, functioning in the realm of the text and/or the interaction among participants (including the expression of stance in the interpersonal realm). –– Retention/Persistence: Bybee and Pagliuca discuss the fact that older meanings of a form “glimmer through” as they are retained from their original lexical sources (1987: 109). Hopper later refined this into the persistence principle of grammaticization, according to which “[w]hen a form undergoes grammaticalization from a lexical to a grammatical function, so long as it is grammatically viable some traces of its original lexical meanings tend to adhere to it, and details of its lexical history may be reflected in constraints on its grammatical distribution” (1991: 22). This can be seen in the grammaticization of NU in the Germanic languages (with the exception of Yiddish) as well as Finnish ny(t): The temporal meaning is still there in the textual function (‘now’ in the text), and the inherently subjective speaker’s origo of ‘now’ is still there in the subjective functions.

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5.2 Further grammaticization of the discourse marker NU So far we have related to that change in grammaticization “whereby lexical items and constructions come in certain linguistic contexts to serve grammatical functions” (Hopper and Traugott 2003: xv) (where we take pragmatics to be part of grammar). We will now explore the second part of Hopper and Traugott’s definition, according to which “once grammaticalized [into a discourse marker, NU] continues to develop new grammatical functions” (2003: xv). We have seen that often, besides the various sequentially defined functions of the discourse markers (e. g., urging, ‘go-ahead’, affirmation, reconfirmation), they additionally, or even predominantly, have functions of expressing epistemic and/or affective stance. The particular epistemic stances and affects expressed vary from language to language. Some of the languages in our volume are extremely rich with respect to the affective stances conveyed by their NU discourse marker. For instance, Yiddish nu has been described as “the verbal equivalent of a sigh, a frown, a grin, a grunt, or a sneer. […] It can be used fondly, acidly, tritely, belligerently. [...] It can convey pride, deliver scorn” (Rosten 2003 [1968]: 397) (see also Assouline 2011). Maschler and Dori-Hacohen (this volume) show that Hebrew nu conveys a variety of stances ranging on a cline from joking to contempt, with mocking, ridiculing, provoking (disrespectfully), belittling, and delivering scorn in between. One question that can be asked is: How does a certain grammatical element (discourse marker, in our case) with a particular sequential function defined by its sequential position develop a stance-related function, which may then become dissociated from that sequential function? Maschler and Dori-Hacohen (this volume) attempt to explain this phenomenon for Hebrew nu on the basis of Traugott’s Invited Inferencing Theory of Semantic Change (1999), according to which conversational implicatures become conventionalized as a result of processes of metaphor and metonymy in communication. As Dahl explains, “if some condition happens to be fulfilled frequently when a certain category is used, a stronger association may develop between the condition and the category in such a way that the condition comes to be understood as an integral part of the meaning of the category” (1985: 11). For example, Maschler and Dori-Hacohen argue that ‘go-ahead’ nu may develop an affective stance-related functional component. The following excerpt is from a political radio phone-in show with a ‘regular’ caller whose political views are quite different from those of the host. After a long heated argument concerning the prime minister at the time, Ariel Sharon, and his son’s pleading guilty in a criminal trial for violating the political parties’ funding law, disalignment



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between host and caller escalates dramatically (see Maschler and Dori-Hacohen, example 7), and the host asks the caller to begin talking ‘more seriously’: Extract (29) (from Maschler and Dori-Hacohen, this volume, Example 7) 01 Host: ..yoter retsini mize. ‘more serious than this’. tov. ‘fine.’

02 Caller: 03 04

lama levazbez 'et hazman? why to waste the time ‘why waste time?’

..'ani yesh li dvarim xashuvim lehagid. I there is to me things important to say ‘I I’ve got important things to say.’

05 Host: →

nu.

06

ken, ‘right,’

07

me'od xashuvim. ‘very important.’

08 Caller: .....(deep breath) 09

...'alef, ‘a (first letter of Hebrew alphabet),’

10

'ani rotsa lehagid, ‘I want to say,’

The caller attempts to comply with the host’s request that she begin talking ‘more seriously’ (‘fine’, line 02) and announces her move to another topic (‘why waste time? I I’ve got important things to say’, lines 03–04), but the host counters this apparent cooperation with ‘nu. right, very important’ (lines 05–07). This nu (in sentence-final falling intonation) functions as a ‘go-ahead’, though a rather reluctant one, heavily loaded with contempt (along with the irony in ‘very important’). (Note the very long silence and the caller’s deep breath (lines 08–10) before she continues on to the new topic.) Maschler and Dori-Hacohen (this volume) argue that since such situations of allowing an interlocutor to perform an action (here, move to a new topic) are repetitively accompanied by reluctance and contempt in Israeli heated argumentative political discourse, over time, nu comes to function as attributing a contemptuous affect to the utterance also in other sequential positions, as for

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example in another section of this conversation, in which the host ridicules the caller for her view that because of the son’s pleading guilty, the father (Ariel Sharon) is also incriminated: Extract (30) (from Maschler and Dori-Hacohen, this volume, Example 7) 01 Host: 'az 'ani 'asiti 'averat tnu'a, so I’ve performed transgression transportation ‘so I’ve performed a traffic transgression,’ 02 Caller: /hu ??????/. /he ??????/. 'aba sheli, 03 Host: ..veyishlexu 'et and they’ll send DIR OBJ father my ‘and they’ll send my father,’ 04

ya'asu lo shlilat rishayon. they’ll do to him taking away license ‘they’ll take away his driver license.’

05

'at tsodeket. ‘you[‘re] right.’

06 07

→ nu, ze-- logika nexona shel xashiva. this logic correct of thinking ‘that’s sound (correct) logical thinking.’

Caller: 08

betax sheze naxon. of course that it correct ‘of course it’s correct.’

The host ridicules the caller by giving an absurd analogy, according to which, as a result of him performing a traffic transgression, his father’s driver license will be taken away (lines 01–04). He concludes this analogy with a contemptuously ironic ‘you’re right. that’s sound logical thinking’ (lines 05, 07). Separating these two clauses is discourse marker nu, no longer functioning as a ‘go-ahead’, but rather intensifying the contempt. (Without it, lines 05, 07 could have been interpreted literally.) In Dahl’s (1985) terms, allowing a participant to continue (the ‘category’) in a heated argument may be accompanied by reluctance and contempt (Dahl’s ‘condition’). If the two (category and condition) co-occur frequently enough in the culture, contempt comes to be understood as an integral part of the meaning of Hebrew nu, and this meaning may become dissociated from the particular



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sequential position, so that we find tokens of nu functioning predominantly in this affective role. This illuminates a special type of grammaticization, one involving affect. As noted above, one of the most common processes accompanying grammaticization is semantic loss or bleaching. Since in Hebrew, nu is a non-referential item to begin with, no semantic loss is involved in this case. Here we find something altogether different – a case of grammaticization in which a non-referential item has acquired meaning, albeit affective meaning, which is of course quite different from referential meaning: It involves no reference to an extralingual world, prosody plays a much more crucial role in capturing it, and it is more tightly tied to the general key of the particular context in which the form occurs. Over recurrent use in similar contexts, however, and in keeping with theories of semantic change (Traugott 1995), Maschler and Dori-Hacohen argue that tokens become dissociated from the particular sequential function, so that speakers come to associate specific affects with this token regardless of its sequential position. This particular grammaticization path is, of course, highly tied to the genre and culture in which nu is employed. As we have seen, some affects conveyed by nu in the contact languages (Ukrainian and Yiddish, see Extract 17 above) and still apparent in early Modern Hebrew literature from the period of revival of the spoken language, are no longer conveyed by Modern Hebrew nu. Thus, we see that despite the strong role that language contact has played in the spread of NU/NÅ across the languages of Europe and beyond, as testified by the fourteen chapters in this book, the diversity and heterogeneity of uses of NU/ NÅ in the different languages show that it is the language games (Wittgenstein 1958) repeated over and over again in each particular culture which ultimately determine the particular uses of NU/NÅ in each language.

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Traugott, Elizabeth Closs 1999. The role of pragmatics in semantic change. In: Jef Verschueren (ed.), Pragmatics in 1998: Selected Papers from the 6th International Pragmatics Conference, vol. II, 93–102. Antwerp: International Pragmatics Association. Traugott, Elizabeth Closs 2003. From subjectification to intersubjectification. In: Raymond Hickey (ed.), Motives for Language Change, 124–139. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Traugott, Elizabeth Closs 2007. Discussion article: Discourse markers, modal particles, and contrastive analysis, synchronic and diachronic. Catalan Journal of Linguistics 6: 139–157. Traugott, Elizabeth Closs and Richard B. Dasher 2002. Regularity in Semantic Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Traugott, Elizabeth Closs and Ekkehard König 1991. The semantics-pragmatics of grammaticalization revisited. In: Elizabeth Closs Traugott and Bernd Heine (eds.), Approaches to Grammaticalization, vol. II, 189–218. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Waltereit, Richard and Ulrich Detges 2007. Different functions, different histories: Modal particles and discourse markers from a diachronic point of view. Catalan Journal of Linguistics 6: 61–80. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1958. Philosophical Investigations. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. New York, NY: Macmillan.

Galina B. Bolden

The discourse marker nu in Russian conversation 1 Introduction The discourse marker nu is one of the most common words in colloquial Russian and one of the two most commonly used discourse particles (with vot, see Table 1) (Sherstinova 2010; Zemskaia 19791). The ubiquity of Russian nu makes explicating its functions a formidable task. Nu is generally characterized as having exhortative meanings (e. g. Vasilyeva 1972); however, this general characterization is not applicable – and, as I will argue, should not be applied – to all nu usages. This chapter, by necessity, is limited in its scope and focuses only on those uses of nu that are most prevalent in my corpus of everyday Russian conversation. Table 1: Most frequent words in a 35-hour corpus of Russian colloquial speech (Sherstinova 2010) Rank

Russian word

Translation

Word frequency

1 2 3 4 5

ja ne vot nu da

‘I’ ‘not’ PRT PRT ‘yes’

2.63 % 2.40 % 2.34 % 2.31 % 2.13 %

A comparison of nu-usage across genres makes it quite clear that nu is characteristic of modern colloquial speech. Table 2 shows the distribution of nu in the National Corpus of the Russian Language (Nacional’nyj korpus russkogo yazyka 2003–2012), which demonstrates that nu is much more common in speech than in writing. Even though one can find instances of nu in written sources (both fictional and nonfictional), those examples primarily come from quoted conversations to represent colloquialism. (Examples of nu from a nonfiction corpus include informal blog-style writing as well as quoted speech in biographies.) These data indicate that the use of nu is largely restricted to – and indicative of – informal, colloquial registers.

1 For the history of Slavic nu, see Sawicki (this volume), Section 2, and particularly footnote 3.



The discourse marker nu in Russian conversation 

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Table 2: Nu across genres National Corpus of Russian Language

Nu-frequency per sentence

Corpus size (sentences)

Written corpus (18th century–current; fiction & nonfiction) Newspaper corpus (1990–current) Speech corpus (public, private, movies) Multimedia corpus (movies 1930–current)

1.1 %

16,205,733

0.38 %

 8,553,495

6.59 %

 1,536,190

4.15 %

   124,219

2 Introducing the functions of nu Nu has been described in several dictionaries (e. g. Dal’ 1880–1882; Efremova 2000; Ozhegov 1949), and a number of studies have attempted to characterize the functions of nu on the basis of its use in literary texts, speech corpora, and/ or researcher intuitions. Often, nu is described by lists of seemingly unrelated functions, each illustrated with a few decontextualized (or thinly contextualized) examples, not unlike a dictionary entry. For instance, Vasilyeva (1972), in a manual for Russian language learners, uses literary sources and invented examples to provide the following list of nu functions: –– Exhorting the hearer to say or do something –– Expressing subjective attitudes and strengthening emotive influence –– emphatic yes and categorical no –– impatience, disagreement, excitement –– Emphasizing the expressed position –– Expressing displeasure, disagreement, refusal, reservation, etc. –– Discourse functions (often, nu vot): –– to mark boundaries in narratives –– in word searches –– to summarize/conclude Zemskaia (1979), working with a corpus of colloquial speech (Zemskaia and Kapanadze 1978), indicates that nu can be used as a pause filler, in emotional expressions, and, as a stand-alone interjection, to mark surprise or as a neutral receipt token. Multisilta (1995) and Kuosmanen and Multisilta (1999) analyze a corpus of interview talk to examine (following Schiffrin 1987) the usages of nu

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 Galina B. Bolden

(and another discourse marker vot) for signaling turn, topical, situational, and information transitions. They list the following environments in which nu is relatively common in their corpus: beginning an answer, a question, a request, a new topic or subtopic, an addition, or explanation/evaluation; returning to an earlier topic; shifting from one event of narration to another; finding the information sought; emotive function; and as a filler. Kuosmanen and Multisilta (1999) also examine prosodic shapes of nu, attesting the fact that it can be both stressed and unstressed, produced with level or rising intonation, and sometimes followed by a pause. These early investigations into nu have, thus, documented its multiple diverse uses. Given the diversity of nu functions, how do interlocutors figure out what nu is supposed to accomplish on each occasion of use? To answer this question, a systematic investigation of contexts of nu deployment needs to be conducted, something that early research has failed to do. One exception to the prior studies’ tendency to overlook the context in which nu is deployed is Paukkeri’s (2006) work on nu as a stand-alone response token, a study that was carried out on a corpus of conversational materials. By limiting her investigation to a particular sequential environment and deploying the conversation analytic methodology (Sidnell and Stivers 2013), Paukkeri is able to account for nu’s exhortative function. She shows that nu (in contrast to two other discourse markers, da and tak) is used to urge the recipient to get to the main point (e. g. following the provision of some parenthetical information), an analysis not dissimilar to the one presented in this chapter (see the section on stand-alone nu). Overall, prior research has shown that nu has a wide range of usages – some having to do with what conversation analysts refer to as action formation (Schegloff 2007), i. e. contributing to an understanding of what action is being accomplished by a turn at talk (e. g. urging, emphasizing, etc.; Paukkeri 2006; Vasilyeva 1972), and some having to do with the turn’s placement in conversation (e. g. marking transitions; Multisilta 1995) or its sequential organization (Schegloff 2007). With the exception of Paukkeri (2006), however, prior studies did not systematically examine contexts of nu uses. Yet research in the conversation analytic tradition has shown that the organization of sequences and larger activities is a crucial resource for building and understanding actions and for understanding what a particular discourse marker is deployed to accomplish (Bolden 2006, 2008a, 2008b, 2009b, 2009c, 2010; Heritage 1984, 1998, 2002b, 2013b; Mazeland and Huiskes 2001; Nevile 2006; Park 2010; Raymond 2004; Schegloff and Lerner 2009). In this chapter, I use conversation analytic methodology to examine how nu is used in a number of different sequential positions. My analysis of nu functioning centers around two themes: urging (which relates to the action formation dimension) and marking disjunction (which relates to the sequential

The discourse marker nu in Russian conversation 



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organization). On the one hand, nu may be used to urge the addressee on or to exhort pressure on the addressee to produce a relevant next action. On the other hand, nu may serve as a general alert to the recipient that what comes next is not the appropriate, projected, or unproblematic next action. Sometimes these two general functions appear to operate concurrently. As with many other discourse markers (e. g. English oh; Heritage 1984, 1998, 2002b), what nu accomplishes needs to be figured out (by the interlocutors, in the first place) on each occasion of use by reference to its general semantics as well as the specifics of local context in which it is deployed. In order to introduce the kinds of nu functions that will be considered in this chapter, let us examine Excerpt 1. Alla is talking on a mobile phone with her mother, Dusya. Prior to this excerpt, the two women dealt with the reason for Alla’s call. In line 01, Dusya initiates a new topic. (For a description of the Russian transcription system deployed here, see Bolden 2008a.) Excerpt 1: Chiropractor (GM15; 0:35) 01 DU:

Ty gde?/ you where ‘Where are you?’

02

(0.2)

03 AL:

Ja vyshla at xajrapraktera/ I left from chiropractor ‘I just left the chiropractor’s office’

04 DU:

→ Nu kak,/ PRT how ‘NU how was it’

05

(0.2)

06 DU:

Sho sde?lali shtota/ what did something ‘Did they do something?’

07 AL:

→ Nu on mne pa tochkam prash[o:lsja:,/ PRT he me on points went-through ‘NU he worked through the points’ [Hm mm/

08 DU: 09 DU: 10 AL:

→ (m)Nu,/ E:ta samae zdelal mne tvaë ljubimae,/ that very did me your favorite ‘((word search)) He did your favorite’

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 Galina B. Bolden

11 DU:

t!=Da::?/ yes ‘Really?’

12 AL:

Krutilku:/ ‘twist’

13 DU:

Hm mm¿/

14 AL:

I: pa-pamasiraval nemn[ozhka/ and massaged a-litte ‘And gave a short massage’

15 DU:

→

[t! Nu xarash^o,/ PRT well ‘NU okay’

As this segment illustrates, in Russian, nu can be used as a stand-alone lexical turn constructional unit (as in line 09) and as a preface to turn constructional units (as in lines 04, 07, and 15) (Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson 1974). Furthermore, nuprefacing is not restricted to particular sequential positions. As can be seen here, nu can preface sequence-initiating actions or first pair parts, such as the question in line 04, conditionally relevant responsive actions or second pair parts (e. g. the answer in line 07), as well as sequence-closing turns (as in line 15) (Schegloff 2007). The stand-alone nu (as in line 09), on the other hand, is significantly more limited in how and where it is deployed. Additionally, there is variation in how nu is produced prosodically: It can be stressed (as in line 15) or unstressed (lines 04, 05, 09); we will also see that nu can be lengthened and produced with a variety of pitch movements (e. g. rising or level intonation). We will return to this case as we examine different uses of nu. The rest of the chapter is organized as follows. I first discuss the data and methodology used in this study. I then turn to the analysis of nu as a stand-alone interjection, followed by an examination of nu-prefacing in different sequential positions: in initiating actions, in responses (to polar and content questions), and in sequence-closing turns.

3 Data and methodology This study is based on an analysis of a large corpus of Russian conversational data collected over the past ten years from several sources. The corpus includes approximately 40 hours of audio-recorded telephone conversations and 40 hours of video-recorded face-to-face interactions. The participants are family members



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 53

and friends; most are recent Russian immigrants living in the United States, some were Russian residents at the time of the recording. The study employs the methodology of Conversation Analysis, which aims to provide a systematic and detailed examination of interlocutors’ understandings of the ongoing talk-in-interaction (Sidnell and Stivers 2013). In accordance with the methodology, segments of talk in which nu was used were identified, transcribed (for a discussion of transcription for Russian conversation, see Bolden 2008a; Hepburn and Bolden 2013), and analyzed in their sequential context. This chapter is based on an analysis of approximately 370 instances of nu that represent its most common usages in the corpus. No attempt is made to account for other uses of nu or for combinations of nu with other discourse markers, which are also quite common (e. g. nu vot, da nu, nu a, or nu i).

4 Stand-alone nu: urging continuation Stand-alone nu – the use of nu as a single lexical turn constructional unit (Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson 1974) – is not as common as nu-prefacing: only 25 instances out of 370 overall in the corpus. In line with Paukkeri’s (2006) analysis, I will show that the stand-alone nu accomplishes a specific action – “urging continuation” – and is deployed in a particular sequential environment: after the addressee produces a preliminary component of an action, a component that projects a continuation or an expansion.2 Excerpt 2 illustrates this usage. Dusya is talking to a friend, Pasha. In line 01, Dusya starts a new topic to report on a doctor’s visit. The first turn constructional unit (TCU) of her report (ja byla sevodnja u nazhn^o,va ‘I went to the foot doctor today’) is a set-up for the announcement of the doctor’s diagnosis (which comes in line 03). Excerpt 2: Foot doctor (GM 19; 3:25) 01 DU:

=Da