Contrastive analysis of confirmation markers in Dutch, French and Italian

Some pragmatic markers have specific interpersonal functions, such as confirming shared assumptions and requesting confirmation (Brinton 1996: 38). This is the case of the three cognate discourse markers (also referred to as pragmatic marker or discourse particle) hé/hè in Dutch, hein in French and eh in Italian, which express confirmation and/or request for confirmation. From an onomasiologic exploratory research based on corpus dialogues excerpts gathered from the CGN (spoken Dutch from Belgium and the Netherlands), the Clapi (spoken French from France), the Valibel (spoken French from Belgium) and the LIP (spoken Italian) corpora, it emerged that these three markers are used as devices to ask the interlocutor to agree on something and/or to check that he/she is following the thread of discourse. In addition, these three markers are particularly likely to occur in the right periphery, that is, the portion of utterance following the verbal dependency structure. (1) A: da 's raar hé (that's weird, huh) B: ja (yes) [CGN] (2) A:il est resté dedans hein (he stayed in, eh) B: oui |- hein (yes-huh) [Valibel] (3) A: ahah in alto mare eh (ahah we have a long way to go, huh) B: gomme siamo in alto mare (tires we have a long way to go) [LIP] The right periphery is a strategic position where discourse markers tend to express modal (Traugott 2007, Waltereit & Detges 2007) or interpersonal (Brinton 1996) functions rather than information structuring ones. It is the best place to comment on the message and to express attitudes because the stated message is accessible to both the speaker and the hearer (Waltereit & Detges 2004). In the right periphery, the interlocutors can take, give or even keep the turn. This explains why, in this position, creativity and/or diplomacy are required (Auer 1992: 52). The right periphery forms a “stress point” in the fabric of discourse, where discourse structure is negotiated among speakers. Following this line, discourse markers are one of the devices useful to hold or give the turn. This is why we take into account both the end of turn and the right periphery in order to analyze the selected discourse markers. There is evidence that the right periphery favors the expression of metadiscursive/intersubjective meanings (Barth-Weingarten & Couper-Kuhlen 2002; Kuno 1974; Mulder & Thompson 2008; Strauss & Xiang 2009; Traugott 2007, 2010; Verstraete 2004; Waltereit & Detges 2007). Concerning the interpersonal function of discourse markers, we conceive it as the way by which the speaker and the hearer mutually rely on shared assumptions and express attention towards the addressee (Traugott 2010). The aim of this paper is to explore the issue of interpersonal meaning in the right periphery: does the discourse marker impose the function to the right periphery or does the discourse marker absorb the function of the right periphery. In order to understand whether discourse markers occurring in the right periphery inherit interpersonal meanings from the position in which they stand or if, in contrast, they carry interpersonal meaning on their own, we propose to compare the study of the three cognates discourse markers hé/hè, hein and eh to the occurrences in the right periphery of three other cognate discourse markers, namely dan in Dutch, alors in French and allora in Italian. The second set of markers is more versatile with respect to the position and the meaning (among other functions, they are also used as (request for) confirmation markers). In addition, this second set of markers differs from the first one because the markers are connective in nature and their core meaning is not interpersonal, while hé/hè, hein and eh are punctuators with strong interpersonal meaning. Our approach is top-down since we focus on specific discourse markers as well as their position to find the (request for) confirmation function. Given the interpersonal nature of the markers under investigation, we chose to focus on spontaneous conversations, where these markers are more likely to occur, especially in the right-periphery. In this paper, we will show the results of 50 randomly selected occurrences of each discourse marker studied: - Dutch discourse markers hé/hè and dan extracted from the CGN corpus; - French discourse markers hein and alors extracted from the Valibel corpus, and from the CLAPI corpus; - Italian discourse makers eh and allora extracted from the LIP corpus. The methodology adopted is a parametric analysis (cf. Degand & Bestgen 2004; Spooren & Degand 2010), in which the variables are clearly defined in order to avoid ambiguous variables and maximize the replicability of the study. The parameters of variation we will focus on are: - the position of the marker (right position – end of the turn); - the collocation; - the speech functions (to open or to sustain by continuing or reacting); - the (request for) confirmation meaning