Marking Boundaries Between Activities: The Particle nii in Estonian

Abstract

This article studies a practice of marking transitions to a next activity in Estonian interaction. The particle nii is implemented at boundaries between activities or phases of activities, showing that a pragmatic particle need not be implemented only in regard to verbal matters, such as topic or turn sequence. Nii marks the prior activity or its phase as being closed down and the next one as imminent. Sequences of verbal and nonverbal actions in audio- and videorecordings disclose the multimodal nature of the boundaries marked by nii. Boundary marking entails a number of interactional capacities, including summoning, claiming authority, setting the agenda, making salient transitions within an individual course of action, marking the expectedness of the sequencing of activities, and changing opportunities for participation.

Thanks for their discussion on various versions of the manuscript to Auli Hakulinen, Trine Heinemann, Håkan Landqvist, Emanuel Schegloff, and the Soc 289b class at UCLA 2008. The study was partly supported by the Swedish Science Foundation grant for the project Estonian in Sweden.

Notes

¹The  exception is the relatively new Finnish-inspired usage of nii as a continuer, which will not be discussed in this study. The Estonian nii‐pattern contrasts with the closely related Finnish, where the historically related item nii(n) is predominantly responsive (Sorjonen, 2001).

² The address only has to be checked, as the client has already had a complimentary subscription to the newspaper.

³ The child's behavior diverges prosodically from other cases in my data.