Chapter published in:
Between Turn and Sequence: Turn-initial particles across languages
Edited by John Heritage and Marja-Leena Sorjonen
[Studies in Language and Social Interaction 31] 2018
► pp. 119–154

Diverging from ‘business as usual’

Turn-initial ngala in Garrwa conversation

| University of Queensland
This paper presents the first detailed attempt to analyse the interactional functions of a turn-initial particle in an Australian Aboriginal language. The Garrwa particle ngala has grammatical properties of a clause connector that sets up a contrast between two simultaneous but distinct events (similar to English while). In this paper I show that ngala is used in conversation turn-initially to simultaneously connect the upcoming talk with the prior turn and to project that the upcoming turn diverges in trajectory from the prior talk or course of action. I also show how the clause connecting and turn-initial functions of ngala are characterised by distinct syntactic and prosodic shapes.
Keywords: Garrwa, Australian Aboriginal Languages
Published online: 19 July 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/slsi.31.05mus
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Mushin, Ilana
2020.  In The ‘Noun Phrase’ across Languages [Typological Studies in Language, 128], ► pp. 212 ff. Crossref logo

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