Backchanneling in Kambaata conversations
Résumé
Our poster presents an overview of backchanneling devices as they are attested in interactive language data from the Ethiopian language Kambaata (Cushitic). Backchanneling is actively encouraged in the Kambaata cultural context, as a well-known local proverb attests (“Speech to which no one says mhmm is an orphan”, cf. Alamu & Alamaayyo 2017: 152). As earlier studies on other languages in the world have amply demonstrated, Kambaata backchannels are also usually perfectly timed to fall into the brief pauses between turns. For Kambaata, we propose to distinguish between responses that seem to primarily express agreement, such as gárita ‘it (is) true’, ekkú ‘okay, I agree’, íshshi < Amharic loan ‘okay, I agree’, and those that rather demonstrate attention and understanding – i.e. backchannels in the narrow sense, which represent the focus of our study: 1. a nasal (mh)mm or a nasalized closed or mid vowel (ũh)ũũ or (ə̃h)ə̃ə̃, obviously the default backchanneling signal (66.1% of attested backchannels), 2. a nasalized, open vowel ɑ̃ɑ̃ or ɑ̃hɑ̃ɑ̃, whose first variant is homophonous with the word for ‘yes’ in the language, and which is the second most frequent backchannel (21.5% of attested backchannels), 3. an ingressive (inhaled) feedback signal [↓], about whose use which we have anecdotal evidence from other languages in Northeast Africa (Eklund 2008). This study is the first to explore its use in natural data. In our Kambaata corpus, it represents the third most frequent backchannel (~11.1%), 4. a front-vowel, non-nasalized ee, especially as ritualized response to narratives, but also a news marker in conversations, paraphrased as ‘that’s interesting! now I am curious, continue!’ by native speakers (~1.4% of the attested backchannels). Finally, we could also count amíin ~ amíi’nn ~ amii’nniyyé ‘amen’, the conventionalized response to blessings in ceremonial as well as daily interactions, among the Kambaata backchannels. Our study is based on audio-recorded two- and three-party conversations, about such diverse topics as traditional beekeeping, blessing and cursing traditions, and exchanges about picture stories. These recordings (deposited as Treis 2024-2025 on Cocoon) are currently being transcribed and translated in a remote collaborative project between a linguist and two native speakers, i.e. the co-authors of this poster.
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