The Northern Russian pragmatic particle 'dak' presents a good case of how
particles are used to structure information in informal language. It
exemplifies that connectives can mark relations to concepts lacking a
concrete linguistic form.
The research presented here is based on a sound corpus of the dialect of
Varzuga, an old Russian Pomor settlement on the White Sea coast. For the
first time, prosodic analysis and recent theories on information structure
and pragmatic particles were applied to describe a Russian dialectal particle.
'Dak' can be described as a procedural marker, signalling how the
information implied in the expression it is attached to relates to other
accessible information. The particle is used in many different contexts and
positions in the utterance, but it was found to always contribute to an
utterance with the same core meaning.
'Dak' signals an asymmetric relation between two information units, x and
y, and that y is based on x. Examples of x and y are cause and consequence,
condition and event and a dialect word and its explanation. X and y are
often set up against alternatives. The specific content of the implied
relation is determined by the context. X and y should not be understood as
linguistic expressions, but as mental units, since they seldom both have a
linguistic expression. 'Dak' is always prosodically attached to the
linguistic representation of x or y, or to both, and takes a fixed position
relative to these expressions.
'Dak' is compared to other particles used in the dialect, like 'da',
'tak', '-to' and 'ved’', which all give a slightly different
contribution to an utterance.
The thesis also contains a general description of the village of Varzuga
and of its endangered dialect, and some sample texts. Sound files can be
downloaded from the author’s website (http://uit.no/humfak/tilsette/95).
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