'Yeah, I doubt it.' 'No, it's true.' How paradoxical responses impact the common ground
department or school: Arts, Faculty of
department or school: Linguistics, Department of
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCV
creator: Guntly, Erin Alisa
issued: 2021-03-31T16:33:28Z
issued: 2021
related degree: Doctor of Philosophy - PhD
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: Speakers use paradoxical responses, such as `yeah, that’s not right’ and `no, I agree’, but the function of these responses is not clear. While one use of response particles (RPs) such as 'yeah' and 'no' is to signal acceptance or rejection of at-issue content into the common ground, the linguistic content that follows these RPs in paradoxical responses suggests that `yeah’ is not agreeing to at-issue content, nor is `no’ rejecting it. This raises the question, what are these responses signalling to update the common ground? This dissertation argues that the two components of paradoxical responses, the RPs and the followup content, are selecting different targets. The set of targets includes not only the at-issue content, but also speaker beliefs and the questions under discussion. Testing this hypothesis, called the Response Target Hypothesis, draws on a mix of methodologies, one experimental and one rooted in corpus data. Corpora of transcribed, unscripted conversations were searched for RPs plus followup content; 200 tokens for `yeah’ and `no’ were identified for a total of 400, 173 of which were paradoxical. In addition to accepting and rejecting the at-issue content, responses which targeted speaker belief and questions under discussion were also frequent. In paradoxical responses, the followup content almost exclusively targets the at-issue content, and RPs select the additional targets. The experiment presented two-phase scripted conversations to participants: one phase using a combination of response particle and followup content, and the second phase checking if the common ground was updated by phase one. Participants were asked to rate the acceptability of the conversation after hearing both phases. Conversations which included paradoxical responses had a likelihood of being judged `appropriate’ or `very appropriate’ similar to those conversations which included non-paradoxical responses but which varied only in the RP. In other words `yeah, it wasn’t’ pat…
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/77684
note: ‘YEAH, I DOUBT IT.’ ‘NO, IT’S TRUE.’HOW PARADOXICAL RESPONSES IMPACT THE COMMON GROUNDbyERIN ALISA GUNTLYA DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THEREQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OFDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHYinTHE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES(Linguistics)The University of British Columbia(Vancouver)March 2021© Erin Alisa Guntly, 2021The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduateand Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the dissertation entitled:‘Yeah, I doubt it.’ ‘No, it’s true.’ How paradoxical responses impact the common groundsubmitted by Erin Alisa Guntly in partial fulஹ஭llment of the requirements forthe degree of Doctor of Philosophyin LinguisticsExamining Committee:Lisa Matthewson, Linguistics, UBCSupervisorRose-Marie Déchaine, Linguistics, UBCSupervisory Committee MemberCarla Hudson Kam, Linguistics, UBCSupervisory Committee MemberMarcin Morzycki, Linguistics, UBCUniversity ExaminerJessica de Villiers, English, UBCUniversity ExaminerManfred Kri஺஽a, Leibniz Center for General Linguistics, Humboldt University of BerlinExternal ExamineriiAbstractSpeakers use paradoxical responses, such as ‘yeah, that’s not right’ and ‘no, I agree’, but the func-tion of these responses is not clear. While one use of response particles (RPs) such as ‘yeah’ and‘no’ is to signal acceptance or rejection of at-issue content into the common ground, the linguisticcontent that follows these RPs in paradoxical responses suggests that ‘yeah’ is not agreeing to at-issue content, nor is ‘no’ rejecting it. This raises the question, what are these responses signallingto update the common ground?This dissertation argues that the two components of paradoxical responses, the RPs and thefollowup content, are selecting diஸferent targets. The set of targets includes not only the at-issuecontent, but also speaker beliefs and the questions under discussion. Testing this hypothesis,called the Response Target Hypothesis, draws on a mix of…
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
date issued: 2021-05
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0396444
language: eng
degree discipline: Linguistics
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Graduate
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/77684