Lithuanian interrogative particles as tags in fiction and spoken registers: A corpus-based study

The present paper deals with the semantic class of the interrogative particles in Lithuanian ar ne, ane, ar taip, ar ką, gal ne, which, when placed utterance finally, form tag questions and perform different pragmatic functions. They can also occur as stand-alone particles or be intertwined in longer discourse passages. The study examines the frequency, positional distribution, and scope of the particles in question in fiction and spoken registers. It will disclose the semantic-pragmatic properties and multifunctionality of the particles by looking into the correlation between their core meaning and occurrence in different speech acts. The present research is corpusbased. The data for the study are retrieved from the sub-corpus of fiction of the Corpus of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language and the Corpus of Spoken Lithuanian. The study combines both qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis. The preliminary results show that, though the particles under study are multifunctional and perform various textual as well as interpersonal functions, their predominant use is in the latter domain, i.e., they tend more frequently to feature in the interpersonal environment serving as (inter)subjective means of involving the interlocutor into the situation discussed, eliciting his/her response or appealing to the common ground.