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Rehbein and Romaniuk’s (in print) classes of H’s signals used for
categorizing H’s parts of ‘Communicative Apparatus’ was used to interpret the
language constellation.
Interjections uttered by Turkish and Azerbaijani native speakers were
analyzed with a computer program named as PRAAT which is a software package
designed in order to help the linguists use in phonetic and phonological research.
Even though main languages were Turkish and Azerbaijani, interlocutors
occasionally made use of English as Lingua Franca (henceforth ELF) when they
had difficulty in explaining some concepts in all the game sessions.
Frequency of interjections with respect to their signals of understanding by
Azerbaijani and Turkish native speakers is given in the table below in order to
summarize the data.
Table 9: Frequency of interjections which signal understanding used by Turkish
and Azerbaijani native speakers.
Frequency of interjections which are the signals of understanding in the
analyzed data
Turkish native speakers
Azerbaijani native speakers
Signal Category
Frequency
Signal Category
Frequency
Interjections
signalling
understanding
89
Interjections signalling
understanding
67
Interjections signalling
misunderstanding
2
Interjections signalling
misunderstanding
0
Interjections signalling
believing to understand
5
Interjections signalling
believing to understand
7
Interjections signalling
guessing
16
Interjections signalling
guessing
19
Interjections signalling
partial understanding
2
Interjections signalling
partial understanding
0
Interjections signalling
non-understanding
5
Interjections signalling
non-understanding
3
Total
119
Total
96
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In this study interjections that signal understanding and stages of
understanding, as presented in Table 8, will be examined.
Table 10: Turkish & Azerbaijani utterances and frequency of interjections
signalling (non-)understanding uttered by Turkish and Azerbaijani
native speakers
Frequency of utterances and interjections which signalling (non-)
understanding in the analyzed data
Turkish native speakers Azerbaijani native speakers
Signal Category
Frequency
Total
Utterance
Frequency
Total
Utterance
Interjections
signalling
understanding
89
1921
67
1344
Interjections
signalling
misunderstanding
2
0
Interjections
signalling
believing to
understand
5
7
Interjections
signalling
guessing
16
19
Interjections
signalling
partial
understanding
2
0
Interjections
signalling
non-
understanding
5
3
Total
119
1921
96
1344
Although the study has a qualitative design, it is also necessary to show the
frequency of occurences of the interjections analyzed. As can be seen in the table
10 presenting the total number of Turkish and Azerbaijani utterances and
frequency of interjections signaling (non-) understanding uttered by Turkish and
Azerbaijani native speakers, Turkish interlocutors signal their
misunderstanding
(2 cases),
partial understanding (2 cases) and
non-understanding (5 times) out of
1921 utterances compared to 1344 Azerbaijani utterances in total.
56
4.2. Forms and Functions of Interjections of Turkish native speakers in terms
of signal types
Forms and Functions of Interjections of Turkish native speakers in terms
of signal types will be presented in this sub-section. General signal types of
interjections of Turkish native speakers are classified based on Rehbein &
Romaniuk’s (in print) signal categories of H’s parts of ‘Communicative
Apparatus’ (CA) by means of which they studied three Slavonic languages:
Russian, Polish and Ukranian. In this study, under the following headings:
Understanding (All stages of understanding are accomplished by H),
Misunderstanding (In this class, adoption of S’s plan by and formation of t e
’s plan are wrongly accomplis ed, i.e. activates wrong knowledge on t e
basis of wrongly perceived speech actions), Believing to understand (Continuing
the discourse without confidence that understanding is correct), Guessing
Realized by ’s ec o questions, explicit ypot eses, queries etc. to make sure
that previous understanding is correct), Partial understanding (H runs through
some stages of understanding but does not adopt S’s plan and/or does not form an
own ’s plan), Non-understanding(H signalizes non-compre ension of speakers’
utterances).
Forms of interjections signalling understanding used by Turkish native
speakers in terms of their signal types are presented as in Table 10. As can be
seen, there are overlaps in the form of interjections uttered by Turkish native
speakers. Yet their functions are distinctively different in discourse.
Functions of the mentioned forms of interjections signalling understanding
are quite distinctive in terms of their uses and functions with respect to their
phonological features. Those features of interjections signalling understanding
will be presented with selected examples from the analyzed data in
EXMARaLDA numbered excerpts. These interjections under investigation will be
presented in bold characters. However, the other interjections which are used to
signal intentions other than understanding will not be investigated.