[Lingtyp] Remind-Me particles across languages

[Juergen Bohnemeyer]

Dear Jeanne – Yucatec has a ‘topic time shifter’ _ka’ch_ that is used for this purpose. It has the semantics of a past tense marker, but it is used only in contexts in which the speaker specifically wishes to trigger the implicature that a past state of affairs no longer holds at utterance time, including counterfactual contexts, frustrative/avertive contexts, and the inaccessible-memory context you’re interested in. There’s a description in Bohnemeyer (2002: 378-388) (which however doesn’t mention the remind-me context).

(I have a ton of recorded examples of this use because it is quite pervasive in elicitation when a speaker is uncertain about details of the task or when two speakers involved in a referential communication task are trying to coordinate on a complex set of stimuli.)

Best – Juergen

Bohnemeyer, J. (2002). The grammar of time reference in Yukatek Maya. Munich: LINCOM.

Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)
Professor, Department of Linguistics
University at Buffalo

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From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Jeanne Lecavelier des Etangs-Levallois via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Date: Monday, March 31, 2025 at 06:00
To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: [Lingtyp] Remind-Me particles across languages
Dear all,

  I am currently looking at Remind-Me particles (particles which express
that the speaker is asking for an information they used to know but forgot,
like English "again" in "What's your name again?") across languages.
Specifically, I am interested in Remind-Me particles (i) which have another
(canonical) meaning when used in other contexts, and (ii) whose
other/canonical meaning is not "again".

For instance, French Remind-Me particle is "déjà" ("already"): "Comment tu
t'appelles toi déjà ?" (literally "What's your name already?") is
interpreted as "What's your name again? (I forgot)".

If you know of any such particle (which can have a Remind-Me use, and which
does not mean "again") in your native language or the language(s) you're
working on, please write to me :-)

Many thanks for your help!
Best,
Jeanne Lecavelier
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