41 Speech Act Particles
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.