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Re: disfluencies/editing expressions

From:Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Date:Friday, September 3, 2004, 19:39
Quoting "J. 'Mach' Wust" <j_mach_wust@...>:

> On Fri, 3 Sep 2004 18:01:35 +0200, Carsten Becker > <naranoieati@...> wrote: > > >Where we're on the topic of filling words and such, what > >would German "ja" (yes) and "doch" (no English equivalent!) > >in sentences like "Ich *kenne* dich doch!" or "*Dich* habe > >ich ja schon lange nicht mehr gesehen!" be translated as in > >English? "do VERB" resp. with "VERBsn't it?" and "VERBs > >it?" maybe? Note that the use of these words is rather > >colloquial. > > This class of words is a specific to German. A characteristic of these words > is that they can't be translated. Other examples are _denn, schon, mal, > wohl_. They're called _Abtönungspartikel_ because they're function is to > gradate or colour or add a flavour to the meaning of the entire sentence as > a whole. Their syntactical function is the sentence focus.
Specific to German? I don't see how they really differ from Swedish particles like _ju_ and _väl_. Notice that _väl_ as particle is different from _väl_ as an adverb _well_ - [vEl] vs [VE:l]. Andreas