The meaning and function of NOrwegian Tags (NOT)

This project has examined the use of certain small words in Norwegian labelled pragmatic particles or tag particles in the linguistic literature. An example is a word such as 'da' (then) in the sentence 'Så de brukes i engelsk også, da' (So they are used in English as well, then). The project has carried out a questionnaire examination about the geographical distribution of 46 Norwegian tag particles. The results are available for researchers and others in terms of searchable electronic maps on the web, and the results can be used as a point of departure for further research. In addition, the project has developed analyses of the meaning and function of some Norwegian pragmatic particles, in tag position as well as in other positions of the sentence, and Norwegian pragmatic particles have been compared to similar words in other languages. The pragmatic particles that we have investigated contribute meaning nuances that would have been less clear without the word, they can make an utterance more easy to understand, and some of these words seem to function as signals of social identity. The project has also investigated the phenomenon called pronominal right-dislocation. An example is a sentence such as 'Vi nordmenn høyredislokerer pronomener, vi' (We Norwegians right-dislocate pronouns, we). The study suggest that there may be connections between the function of this construction and the many tag particles in Norwegian. More generally, the results indicate that there may be connections between the function of tag particles and general cognitive effects of using an allegedly superfluous language expression. In addition to basic research on the function of pragmatic particles, the project has developed and tested out the effect of teaching material about pragmatic particles on people who are learning Norwegian as a second language.

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The main goal of this project is to deepen our knowledge about the meaning and function of tag particles based on novel data from Norwegian dialects. A tag particle occurs immediately after a sentence or utterance. An example is the word 'gitt' in the Nor wegian sentence 'Dette blir et interessant prosjekt, gitt!' (This will be an interesting project, PART!). The meaning of tag particles is notoriously hard to pin down and to translate from one language to another, which is one reason why studying these wo rds is important. This is first of all a basic research project that will lead to descriptions and theoretical analyses of the semantics and pragmatics of a selected set of tag particles that have not previously been studied. It is important to investigat e these particles now, since Norwegian dialects are rapidly changing and tag particles may be a particularly vulnerable phenomenon. Methodologically, the project will contribute to the development of new elicitation/interview techniques specifically aimed at revealing the meaning and function of tag particles. Theoretically, the project will explore the possibility of accounting for universal properties of tags, which will ease the description, comparison and translation of tag particles across languages. The project will also result in a language resource with popular scientific as well as scientific value, i.e. an electronic map of the dialect-specific Norwegian tag particles distributed geographically across Norway.