A Unified Interactional Model of mos in Kaaps: Grounding and Assertion

This article develops a unified interactional model of the Kaaps particle mos. Drawing on a purpose-built corpus of written and spoken Kaaps, it argues that the particle should not be treated as conveying a set of unrelated lexical senses. Instead, the interpretive variation associated with mos is shown to be grammatically constrained. Clause-medial mos is analysed as a grounding- related element licensed in proposition-internal structure at the edge of the vP phase. Clause-final mos is analysed as the spell-out of a distinct clausal- peripheral assertive head whose availability is gated by affirmative polarity. On this view, the pragmatic outcomes—shared knowledge, justification, new-but- essential information, and two distinct assertive outcomes—follow from a configuration-to-update mapping in which syntactic structure constrains the available interactional update space. The analysis is an attempt at refining current interactional approaches to clause structure and contributes new evidence from Kaaps to the formal study of discourse particles.