The discourse particle well and its equivalents in Swedish and Dutch

Abstract

The aim of the article is to make a contribution to the description of the meaning and functions of well by looking at its translations into Swedish and Dutch. In order to study well cross-linguistically we have used electronic translation corpora. Our account of well is based on Bakhtin's notion of heteroglossia as it is integrated within the systems of modality and evidentiality (White 1999(White , 2000. A comparison is made with earlier proposals by Carlson we found a wide range of translations, testifying to the uses of well as a connective and as an interpersonal marker. We want to claim that these different uses can be explained from the general heteroglossic function that well fulfils. The translations also show that positive appraisal is still part of the meaning of well, though in some cases this meaning aspect is more salient than in others.

English-Estonian code-copying in Estonian blogs

“…Th e meaning of the word well depends on the context. According to Aijmer and Simon- Vandenbergen (2006Vandenbergen ( : 1123 well can be used to express very diff erent emotions, such as surprise or reluctance, also politeness and hesitation. Th e reason for copying might also be that there isn't an exact equivalent in Estonian and also for the pragmatic impact.…”

Prosody and Particles: A Study of Interaction in a Malaysian Academic Meeting

“…The particles under investigation are referred to in various ways including "discourse markers" (Schiffrin 1987), "discourse particles" (Aijmer & Simon-Vandenbergen 2003) or "interjections" (Enfield et al 2013), in addition to the expression ums and ahs. They differ from words in having little or no linguistic organisation.…”

“…Particles of the type [ə] and [m] resemble isolated phonemes, while erm and ya resemble syllables. Some words such as well (Aijmer & Simon-Vandenbergen 2003) and right when coopted for use as particles retain their phonological structure, but others lack any clearly defined phonological organisation, which means that they are not subject to phonological rules If these particles are not linguistically structured, we cannot assume that they can be analysed using linguistic techniques. The first attempt to describe English prosody (Steele 1775) actually took a musical approach.…”

A parallel corpus approach to investigating semantic change

“…Parallel (or translation) corpus approaches are less well-documented, though a spate of recent studies indicate their usefulness in translation studies (Granger et al 2003;Olohan 2004;Anderman & Rogers 2008). They have been applied, using the Oslo Multilingual Corpus, in the exploration of the function of pragmatic markers in synchrony, in Aijmer and Simon-Vandenbergen (2003), using the English-Swedish Parallel Corpus and the Triptic Corpus for Dutch, to explore the equivalents of well in Swedish and Dutch and, in Aijmer (2007), to study translations of oh in Swedish and German (and to items in Swedish which are translated oh in English). To my knowledge, a parallel corpus approach has not been employed to explore the diachronic evolution of the senses and functions of pragmatic markers, and in particular to trace the evolution of quand même in French.…”