On the meaning and use of 'okay' in spoken German

Abstract

We present an account of the meaning and use of 'okay' in spoken German based on a conversation analytic study of the Berlin-Map-Task-Corpus, focusing on three uses: 'pure acknowledgment', 'acceptance', and u'ndecidedness marking'. Semantically, we propose that 'okay' denotes a truth predicate. This allows for a uniform semantics: The different uses of 'okay' can be derived from that meaning in connection with the meanings of prosodic contours which we take here to indicate stance marking. Pragmatically, we propose that the basic function of 'okay' is to indicate uptake. For simplicity and lack of space, our proposal will be approximated in terms of a three-valued propositional multi-agent model, in which 'okay' is taken to denote a constant function from formulas to the truth value 'true'.