Klallam Grammar Main Menu Klallam Grammar Alphabet and Sounds Basics Grammar Introduction: How to Use This Grammar 1 Transitive and Intransitive Verbs 2 Past and Future Tense 3 Basic Speech Acts 4 Nouns and Articles 5 Possessive Pronouns 6 Adjectives 7 Object Pronouns 8 The Preposition and Word Order 9 Negative Words 10 More Negative Words 11 Self and Each Other 12 Questions: ‘Who?’ and ‘What?’ 13 Subordinate Subjects in Questions 14 Questions: ‘Whose?’ 15 Focus Pronouns and Answering Questions 16 Comparison 17 Conjunction: ‘And/with,’ ‘but/without,’ and ‘or’ 18 Questions: ‘When?’ 19 Time Expressions 20 More Time Expressions 21 Time Prefixes 22 Questions: ‘Where?’ 23 Some Place Expressions 24 Source, Way, and Destination 25 Serial Verbs 26 Questions: ‘How?’ and ‘How much?’ 27 While Clauses 28 Adverbial Expressions 29 Intensifier Auxiliaries 30 Conditional Clauses 31 Passive Sentences and Shifting Vowels 32 Lexical Suffixes 33 Collective Plural 34 Possessed Verbs 35 So Then ... 36 Reporting Verbs and Direct Quotes 37 Indirect Quotes 38 Questions: ‘Why?’ 39 Because 40 Cause 42 The Actual: To Be Continuing 43 State, Result, and Duration 44 Participant Roles and Middle Voice 45 Recipient, Beneficiary, and Source Objects 46 Reflexive, Noncontrol Middle, and Contingent 47 Activity Suffixes 48 Relative Clauses 49 Verbal Prefixes 50 Movement and Development Suffixes 51 Nominalizing Prefixes 52 Adverbial Prefixes 53 More Demonstrative Articles 54 Objects of Intent, Emotion, Direction, and Success 55 More Reduplication Patterns 56 Interjections 57 Rare Suffixes 58 A Fully Annotated Text 59 Texts to Annotate 60 Conclusion Appendices Klallam Dictionary Klallam-English and English-Klallam sections only

41 Speech Act Particles

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‘I go’ in Klallam is hiyáʔ cn. This is a sentence. Actually using this sentence in talking to someone constitutes a speech act. A speech act always involves a speaker and an addressee.

A sentence contains information about an event. The speech act relates this information to the speaker and the addressee. So, for example, if I say to you hiyáʔ cn, I (cn) am the speaker and I am simply relating a fact to my addressee (you). The type of speech act I am performing is a statement. On the other hand, if I say hiyáʔ u cn  ‘Do I go?,’ I am not simply relating a fact; I am relating my desire at this time that you give me information about an event. The speech act I am performing is a question.

The yes/no question marker u is a speech act particle. It specifies something about the information in the sentence that relates to the speaker and the addressee.

Klallam has a number of speech act particles. These little words have several things in common:
1. They all come somewhere after the first word of the sentence and before any other verb or article in the sentence.
2. They are small and unstressed.
3. They all indicate the speaker’s knowledge or needs in regard to the basic event expressed in the sentence.

You have already seen quite a few of these speech act particles. Can you think of any others now?

Here is a list of the speech act particles that have been introduced so far. You should take some time now to go back and review each of these. Pay special attention to where they occur in the sentence and to how they relate to the speech act:
yaʔ               past   §2.1
caʔ               future  §2.2
či                 command  §3.1
kʷi               suggest   §3.1, §15.2
u                  yes/no question §3.2
ʔuč               request  §12, §14, §18, §22, §26
ʔay̓               limited request  §12, §14, §18, §26
kʷaʔčaʔ         therefore  §38
q / qɬ             hypothetical  §30.3

We can also include cn ‘I,’  caʔn ‘I, future,’ cxʷ ‘you,’ st ‘we,’ and hay ‘you pluralizer’ in this list, since they also occur in the position following the first word of the sentence and they also directly relate to the speaker and addressee in the speech act.

In this section we review the placement of these twelve particles and learn the placement and use of nine more.
 

This page has paths:

  1. Grammar Montler, et al.

Contents of this path:

  1. 41.1. č̓ ‘hearsay,’ iq ‘wish,’ ixʷ ‘guess,’ ʔuʔčə ‘must,’ and q̓ ‘emphatic’
  2. 41.2. ta ‘thought,’ wuʔ ‘wonder,’ čtə ‘probably,’ and ʔučtə ‘expected’
  3. 41.3. ʔaʔčtay ‘speculate,’ čakʷi ‘usual,’ hakʷ ‘why not,’ and kʷiči ‘independent’
  4. 41.4. šaʔ ‘obvious’; kʷə, kʷɬaʔ ‘inform’; and kʷaʔčaʔ, kʷɬaʔčaʔ ‘therefore’
  5. 41.5. Combining speech act particles