The Role of the Turkish Modal Particle ya in Discourse Relations: An Experimental Study

Abstract

This study examines how the Turkish modal particle ya functions as a common ground managing operator in the role of re-mentioning a proposition in varying discourse conditions (Karagjosova, 2004). Although its German counterpart ja has received some attention (Döring & Repp, 2019), due to its strict requirements on the interlocutors and its diverse range of functions, the modal particle ya has not yet been the main focus of any empirical studies (Özbek, 2000; Dikmen et. al., 2023). Since previous research heavily relies on corpus data and informal judgments, this research, on the other hand, adopts an experimental approach to overcome challenges such as limited control over discourse context, proposition length, and thematic consistency in order to uncover ya. The experiment conducted tested the presence and absence of the modal particle to see whether its absence would degrade the coherence in varying discourse relations. The experiment involved a 2x2 factorial design with two discourse relations (background & reason) and particle’s presence (present & absent) as factors. Over 100 participants rated the acceptability on a 1-7 Likert-type scale. The results revealed no significant difference in ratings across all conditions, suggesting that the absence of ya does not negatively affect the coherence, and its presence does not necessarily contribute to higher judgments. We have also analysed the response time data to see whether ya’s absence affect them in any way. Again, the results did not reveal any significant difference. The study concludes that ya can appear in both background and causal contexts without significantly altering the coherence or the acceptability, suggesting flexibility in its role.