Doing confirmation with ja/nee hoor. Sequential and prosodic characteristics of a Dutch discourse particle

This paper offers sequential-interactional and prosodic observations on the confirmation forms ja hoor / nee hoor ('yes'+particle hoor / 'no' + hoor) in Dutch talk-in-interaction, as part of a larger analysis of the form and function of the particle hoor. We show that ja/nee hoor is used as a marked confirmation in sequentially specifiable context-types. When used as a response to queries, the speaker marks doing confirmation as programmatically motivated. When used in environments that further §[ sequence expansion], ja/nee hoor resists such expansion. Thus, the use of ja/nee hoor is motivated by an orientation to multiple levels of discourse organization. Ja/nee hoor is associated with recurrent pitch contours which are systematically distributed across environments of use. We discuss our findings in relation to previous findings on the use of hoor in Dutch.