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Discourse Marker Compositionality: Yeah-No and No-Yeah: Russell Lee-Goldman
Discourse Marker Compositionality: Yeah-No and No-Yeah: Russell Lee-Goldman
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Outline
1
Introduction
Yeah in brief
Discussion
Wrap-up
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Introduction
Outline
1
Introduction
Yeah in brief
Discussion
Wrap-up
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Introduction
Goals
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Introduction
Yeah-no: a preview
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Introduction
No-yeah: a preview
Sometimes as no yeah:
L: To grow money, besides like supporting an industry thats basically a
sin industry and
R: Well, [alcohol] is too.
L:
[you know]
L: No, yeah, definitely.
R: Alcohol is more so than cigarettes.
[audio]
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Introduction
The questions
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Introduction
Data
Corpora:
ICSI Meeting Recorder Corpus (multiparty, face-to-face,
colleagues)
English Fisher Corpus (dialogue, telephone, strangers)
Data extraction:
ICSI: Extracted all instances of yeah followed immediately by no
(and vice versa) within two seconds from a single speaker.
Yeah-no: 78
No-yeah: 11
no-yeah: 35.
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Outline
1
Introduction
Yeah in brief
Discussion
Wrap-up
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Response token
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Extensions
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Outline
1
Introduction
Yeah in brief
Discussion
Wrap-up
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Acknowledgement
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Topic-shift
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Joke-to-serious
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Clearing up misunderstandings
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Yeah in brief
Outline
1
Introduction
Yeah in brief
Discussion
Wrap-up
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Yeah in brief
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Yeah in brief
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Yeah in brief
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Outline
1
Introduction
Yeah in brief
Discussion
Wrap-up
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Previous research
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Compositionality - I
(4): no-yeah
A tells B about what it is like in England during a holiday.
The description includes a negatively-framed description.
a lot of people have those days off their job, which doesnt really
happen here
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Compositionality - II
(5): Yeah-no
Susan had proposed an idea, initially presenting it as unlikely (not
in clip)
David (group leader) discusses it for a while, but is somewhat
skeptical
Susan shows uptake of the criticism/comments with yeah, and
rejects the group leaders understanding of her claim with no
Would be possible with just no (or, with a different feel, just yeah).
[audio]
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Compositionality - III
(6): Yeah-no
A group member offers Alice a larger role in the project.
A joking discourse emerges.
At the end, Alice brings it back to the question at hand. No marks
the transition to serious talk. Yeah is polyfunctional, indicating one
or more of: uptake, topic wrap-up, positive response to an offer.
[audio]
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Interim summary
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Interim summary
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Interim summary
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Radio interviews
Yeah-no is common in (news) radio interviews, especially after the
host has just prompted a guest for an opinion.
[after a listener calls in with a series of observations, including the
frequency of robust in recent public discourse]
Neal Conan: Any thoughts on those, Geoffrey?
Geoffrey Nunberg: Yeah. No. I think robust, for example, is an
instance of one of those vogue words that for one reason or another is
just picked up and people like the sound of it. Youre right. I dont know
if its erudition but theres a kind of pleasure in saying a word like that
and everybody plugs into it.
NPR, Talk of the Nation, 2 June 2004: Language Use in
Confrontational Times
RLG (UC Berkeley)
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Discussion
Outline
1
Introduction
Yeah in brief
Discussion
Wrap-up
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Discussion
Not all uses of no and yeah are attested or equally frequent in the
two orders.
No in the two orders:
agree disagree misunderst. response
y-n 7
3
19
0
n-y 13
0
4
3
Yeah: Categorization is extremeley difficult.
topic-shift
8
4
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Discussion
Not all uses of no and yeah are attested or equally frequent in the
two orders.
No in the two orders:
agree disagree misunderst. response
y-n 7
3
19
0
n-y 13
0
4
3
Yeah: Categorization is extremeley difficult.
topic-shift
8
4
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Discussion
Not all uses of no and yeah are attested or equally frequent in the
two orders.
No in the two orders:
agree disagree misunderst. response
y-n 7
3
19
0
n-y 13
0
4
3
Yeah: Categorization is extremeley difficult.
topic-shift
8
4
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Discussion
Specialization
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Discussion
Specialization
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Discussion
Specialization
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Discussion
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Wrap-up
Outline
1
Introduction
Yeah in brief
Discussion
Wrap-up
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Wrap-up
Summary
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Wrap-up
Summary
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Wrap-up
Summary
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Wrap-up
Summary
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Wrap-up
Future work
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Wrap-up
Acknowledgements
Thank you!
Thanks also to Eve Sweetser, Alice Gaby, Michael Ellsworth, and audiences
at UC Berkeley for fruitful discussion and criticism. Thanks to ICSI for making
available the ICSI and Fisher corpora.
Slides available at http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~rleegold
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Wrap-up
References
Burridge, K., & Florey, M. (2002). Yeah-no hes a good kid: A Discourse
Analysis of Yeah-no in Australian English. Australian Journal of
Linguistics, 22(2), 149171.
Drummond, K., & Hopper, R. (1993). Some Uses of Yeah. Research on
Language and Social Interaction, 26(2), 20312.
Fuller, J. M. (2003). The influence of speaker roles on discourse marker use.
Journal of Pragmatics, 35, 2345.
Jefferson, G. (1984). Notes on a Systematic Deployment of the
Acknowledgement Tokens Yeah and Mmhm. Papers in Linguistics,
17(2), 197216.
Jefferson, G. (2002). Is no an acknowledgment token? Comparing
American and British uses of (+)/() tokens. Journal of Pragmatics,
34, 13451383.
Schegloff, E. A. (2001). Getting serious: Joke serious no. Journal of
Pragmatics, 33, 19451955.
Tao, H. (2003). Turn Initiators in Spoken English: A Corpus-Based Approach
to Interaction and Grammar. In P. Leistyna & C. F. Meyer (Eds.), (pp.
187208). Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi.
RLG (UC Berkeley)
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Wrap-up
Compositionality - IV
(7): No-yeah
A asks B a leading question about the actions of George W. Bush,
which B hesitates to react to.
A clarifies, and B responds first by indicating with no that he
rejects the implication of disagreement, then by indicating with
yeah his agreement with the proposition.
[audio]
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Wrap-up
Radio interviews
BLOCK: I gather you knew that the team leader who was killed, Tom
Little, in your work in Afghanistan. I imagine this hits especially close to
home for you.
Dr. FANGE: Yeah, no, it was a very tragic thing and, of course,
everybody who knew Tom and also who knew the others who were
murdered, and so everybody are very upset, of course.
NPR, All Things Considered, 10 August 2010: Aid Groups Weigh
Work In Afghanistan After Killings
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Wrap-up
Popular observations
Yeah-no is noticable.
Urban Dictonary: A phrase that people now use to start
sentences for some goddamn reason.
Facebook page entitled: Please stop beginning your statements
with yeah, no.
A blog reader submits a most hated phrase: Answering a
question with Yeah, No. Contradictory much?
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Wrap-up
Popular observations
A slew of observations by the authors and readers of Language
Log and Language Hat.
[This particular token] covers all the interactional bases it
acknowledges the interlocutor and (ambiguously) suggests
agreement, while simultaneously (and ambiguously) indicating
novelty in the form of divergence from (perhaps shared)
presuppositions or expectations. (Mark Liberman, blogger at
Language Log)
"Yes, I acknowledge what you said and I accept the criticism or
clarification you have proposed regarding my previous
statement, or regret that I have not made myself clear, and so I
hereby retract, amend, or amplify my position on the subject."
(Field Interviewee No. 47, commenter at languagehat)
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