Backchannels in Tigrinya

Abstract

This article aims at describing the system of backchannel and how it is linguistically marked in oral face-to-face interaction in Tigrinya, which is a North-Ethio-Semitic language. Though the language is used by its speakers at all regional domains, its conversational structure is not explored in depth. The data employed in this study was established from audio-recorded sociolinguistic interviews, recordings of authentic conversations, fieldnotes, introspective data and data from previous studies. The data generally totals 300 minutes oral data, 612 sentences from fieldnote and examples form empirical studies, and 115 introspective examples. The findings reveal that Tigrinya speakers use fillers, particles, phrases, pronominals, and clauses. These language expressions are used as asides (encouraging an interlocutor to proceed speaking), to seek attention, to request for confirmation, to confirm attention, and to mark understanding of an information. Besides, some of the backchannel dives, for example, the verbs contain number, gender, and tense agreement in them. The linguistic expressions that used as backchannels in Tigrinya, therefore, are not only short or monosyllabic words.    

Keywords: backchannel, continuer, confirmation, call attention, stating information