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Part of
Fixed Expressions: Building language structure and social action
Edited by Ritva Laury and Tsuyoshi Ono
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 315] 2020
► pp. 167–202

Chapter 7
The Finnish projector phrase se että as a fixed expression

 | University of Oulu
 | University of Turku
 | University of Helsinki
This chapter shows that the Finnish expression se että ‘it (is) that’, consisting of a demonstrative followed by a complementizer, is a fixed projective element in talk-in-interaction both on its own and with collocating elements. It shares features with projector phrases identified for other languages: it is used both to prepare the addressee for the nature of the upcoming and to underline the upcoming as central to the ongoing interaction. The analysis of se että having grammaticized into a projector phrase is supported by prosodic evidence: the two elements are most often produced as one prosodic word. The findings support the idea that se että emerges in interaction with a fixed form rather than being generated by a syntactic rule.
Keywords: conversation analysis, dialect interview, emergence, everyday conversation, Finnish, interactional linguistics, projector phrase, prosodic reduction
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
  • 3. Data and methods
  • 4.Elements collocating with the se että expression
    • 4.1Elements in the pre-se että position
    • 4.2Elements in the mid-se että position
    • 4.3Elements in the post-se että position
    • 4.4Expansions of the se että expression
    • 4.5 Collocating elements: Summary and discussion
  • 5.Interactional functions of the se että expression
  • 6.Prosodic features of se että
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgement
  • Notes
  • Data sources
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 10 December 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.315.07vat
References (55)
Data sources
Arkisyn: A Morphosyntactically Coded Database of Conversational Finnish. Database compiled at the University of Turku, with material from the Conversation Analysis Archive at the University of Helsinki and the Syntax Archives at the University of Turku. Department of Finnish and Finno-Ugric Languages, University of Turku.
Corpus of Finnish Dialects. Syntax Archives, Department of Finnish and Finno-Ugric Studies, University of Turku.
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