Christian DiCanio@bkeej Yes, final particles. Triqui has like 43 of them.
rhenderson@cdicanio i know lots of languages have final particles, but I would like one that behaves similarly to rising intonation in english ona variety of semantic tests. So which of the 43 behaves like english rising intonation? Perhaps we should do some work together.
I have a handout on the particles and Jürgen and I started to do some work on the ones that were seemingly evidential (or the ones I could never define).
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335001623_Final_particles_in_Itunyoso_Triqui
Does rising intonation in English express a single concept? In English or Triqui, interlocutor belief about the answer is mixed in with the question. So, it's different particles in Triqui or different rise types (perhaps) in English when doubt is expressed too.
But also, phonetically, is a rise one thing? The answer is "no." There is global rise, upstep, and pre-final rise; just as you have declination, downstep, and final lowering.
But it would be lovely to work on this with you.
@bkeej By the way, here's a second handout on the "mystery" particles that we haven't figured out. It's more fieldnotes than a handout though.
Great handout! These are super interesting, and it is impressive given how hard it is to work on expressions like these.
The rise I am thinking out in English is probably uniformly definable. It's the L* H-H% you get on questions and rising declarative.
The main semantic question is whether we can give a uniform semantics to this tune over expressions that have question form and those with declarative form.
Most proposals are that this rise modulate speaker commitments in some way
@cdicanio So, it is probably not evidential. Also, it probably doesn't do exactly what a standard "question particle" does.
It would have to be an expression that can be appended to declaratives, but also (must?) be appended to all canonical questions.
The kind of meaning people have proposed for L* H-H% is, in fact, quite weird, which is why I'm interested in whether we can find particles that do the same. If not, we would have real puzzle on our hand :D
@bkeej Yes, so interrogatives are obligatorily marked with particles in Triqui - or via morphological marking on the address term (see attached). Most conversations involving any compadrazgo or respect differences require you end every sentence with an address term and thus, there are forms of these that carry speech act information. There are no questions that lack marking of some sort.
@cdicanio can those same question particles also go on sentences of declarative form? There might not otherwise be a distinction (besides the question particle, which makes it hard).
@bkeej So, which particles do you mean? If it's the polar question nih4 particle? It only goes on questions.
If it's the positive tag question particle aj3/aj5/anj3/anj5 (it has 4 allomorphs), then it can go on both declaratives and questions. It's very much like Canadian English 'eh?' this way.