'hvað' as a discourse particle

Orðið 'hvað' sem orðræðuögn

Abstract

This study focuses on a particular use of the interrogative pronoun hvað ‘what’ in Icelandic conversation. Besides occurring in open questions (e.g. hvað er þetta ‘what
is this’), hvað can also be used as a discourse particle in repair sequences. Such occurrences typically occur in turns that contain either numeral information (time,
number or quantity) or names and other specific labels. The following two examples are drawn from the the spoken corpus ÍSTAL: (1) en
ég hef einmitt er með hvað tuttuguogeinstommu skjá niðri í vinnu ‘but I have just have hvað twenty one inch screen down at work’, and (2) það heitir (þa-) (m-) eða þarna
(niðr-) (það) sem var niðri í bæ hvað þarna Mjölnisholt ‘it is called (i-) (m-) or there (do-) (it) which was downtown hvað there Mjölnisholt’. In (1) and (2), hvað is used to
structure a repair sequence that aims at solving problems that have arisen in the flow of the conversation. To be more specific, hvað functions as a repair initiator in selfinitiated
self-repairs. It is argued, on one hand, that the main role of the particle is to mark a minor inconsistency that may exist between what is said and what is actually
the case (1), and, on the other, that the speaker is doing a word-search (2). The empirical data comprises around 20 hours of naturally occurring conversation
from the ÍSTAL database recorded in 2000. In total, there are 25 sequences that contain an occurance of hvað as a discourse particle. The theoretical and methodological
framework is conversation analysis and interactional linguistics.