This article discusses the use of the Finnish change-of-state token aa that has previously not been identified. The central claim is that even though aa indicates a cognitive shift experienced by the speaker, it does not function as a receipt of new information. Instead, the token aa indicates that the speaker understands here and now something relevant that conflicts with his or her previous assumptions or that was otherwise unclear. Indicating now-understanding becomes relevant when the speaker's prior misunderstanding gets corrected by the recipient and in situations where the speaker first fails to understand something and reveals it by initiating repair. This article demonstrates that claiming now-understanding with aa in these contexts functions as a sign of problem resolution that enables sequence closure and resumption of the main line of talk. The article also discusses the prosodic variation of the token aa. This study contributes to research on change-of-state tokens and their epistemics in different languages.
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