This book offers a corpus-based comparative study of an almost entirely unexplored set of multi-word lexical items serving pragmatic or text-structuring functions. Part One provides a descriptive account of multi-word discourse markers in written English, French and German, focussing on dicussion of interlingual equivalence. Part Two examines the use of multi-word markers by non-native speakers of English and discusses lexicographical and pedagogical implications.
This volume seeks to answers such questions as: how is conscious experience translated into discourse? How are foregrounding and backgrounding accomplished? What is the function of features like lexical choice and referential choice? And many more.
Discourse markers constitute an important part of linguistic communication, and research on this phenomenon has been a thriving field of study over the past three decades. However, a problem that has plagued this research is that these markers exhibit a number of structural characteristics that are hard to interpret based on existing methodologies, such as grammaticalization. This study argues that it is possible to explain such characteristics in a meaningful way. It presents a cross-linguistic survey of the development of discourse markers, their important role in communication, and their relation to the wider context of sociocultural behaviour, with the goal of explaining their similarities and differences across a typologically wide range of languages. By giving a clear definition of discourse markers, it aims to provide a guide for future research, making it essential reading for students and researchers in linguistics, and anyone interested in exploring this fascinating linguistic phenomenon.
Discourse markers - the particles oh, well, now, then, you know and I mean, and the connectives so, because, and, but and or - perform important functions in conversation. Dr Schiffrin's approach is firmly interdisciplinary, within linguistics and sociology, and her rigourous analysis clearly demonstrates that neither the markers, nor the discourse within which they function, can be understood from one point of view alone, but only as an integration of structural, semantic, pragmatic, and social factors. The core of the book is a comparative analysis of markers within conversational discourse collected by Dr Schiffrin during sociolinguistic fieldwork. The study concludes that markers provide contextual coordinates which aid in the production and interpretation of coherent conversation at both local and global levels of organization. It raises a wide range of theoretical and methodological issues important to discourse analysis - including the relationship between meaning and use, the role of qualitative and quantitative analyses - and the insights it offers will be of particular value to readers confronting the very substantial problems presented by the search for a model of discourse which is based on what people actually say, mean, and do with words in everyday social interaction.
This book, situated within the framework of Comparative Interactional Linguistics, explores a family of fourteen discourse markers across the languages of Europe and beyond (Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian, Polish, Romani, Estonian, Finnish, Upper Saxonian and Standard German, Dutch, Icelandic, and Swedish), arguing that they go back to one, possibly two, particles: NU/NÅ. Each chapter analyzes the use of one of the NU/NÅ family members in a particular language, usually on the basis of conversational data, feeding into a comprehensive chapter on the structure, function, and history of these particles. The approach taken in this volume broadens the functional linguistic concept of ‘structure’ to include the sequential positioning of the particles and their composition, and the concept of ‘function’ to include the conversational actions performed in interaction. Employing conversation analytic methodology thus enables a study of the ways these particles acquire meaning within certain sequential and action environments -- both cross-linguistically and with regard to the grammaticization of the particles. All this sheds light on the borrowing patterns of NU/NÅ across the languages. With contributions by Peter Auer, Galina B. Bolden, Gonen Dori-Hacohen, Andrea Golato, Harrie Mazeland, Auli Hakulinen, Helga Hilmisdóttir, Leelo Keevallik, Hanna Lehti-Eklund, Anna Lindström, Yael Maschler, Yaron Matras, Gertrud Reershemius, Mirja Saari, Lea Sawicki, Marja-Leena Sorjonen, Heidi Vepsäläinen and Matylda Weidner.
This book offers a corpus-based comparative study of an almost entirely unexplored set of multi-word lexical items serving pragmatic or text-structuring functions. Part One provides a descriptive account of multi-word discourse markers in written English, French and German, focussing on dicussion of interlingual equivalence. Part Two examines the use of multi-word markers by non-native speakers of English and discusses lexicographical and pedagogical implications.
In our everyday speech we represent events and situations, but we also provide commentary on these representations, situating ourselves and others relative to what we have to say and situating what we say in larger contexts. The present volume examines this activity of discourse marking from an enunciative perspective, providing the first English-language study of the highly influential Theory of Enunciative and Predicative Operations. This semantic/pragmatic theory is popular among academics who specialize in linguistics, discourse analysis, translation studies and didactics in France, but has not yet been widely adopted elsewhere. The tools of this theory are applied to a variety of specific discourse markers in contemporary English and semantic hypotheses are tested using the data-based approach of corpus linguistics. This book therefore provides an English-speaking readership with the keys to understand the theory underlying the author’s analysis of a selection of markers (‘anyway’, ‘indeed’, ‘in fact’, ‘yet’, ‘still’, ‘like’ and 'I think'). This book will provide a valuable resource for students and researchers in linguistics with an interest in discourse markers, natural language argumentation, formal semantics, the interfaces between syntax, semantics and pragmatics, linguistic theorisation and French – or “poststructural” – models of discourse analysis.
This book is a comparative corpus-based study of discourse markers based on verbs of saying in English and French. Based on a wide comparable web corpus, the book investigates how discourse markers work in discourse, and compares their differences of position, scope and collocations both cross-linguistically and within single languages. The author positions this study within the wider epistemological background of the French-speaking ‘enunciative’ tradition and the English-speaking ‘pragmatic’ tradition, and it will be of particular interest to students and scholars of semantics, pragmatics and contrastive linguistics.
Studies of Discourse Markers so far have concentrated on either the descriptive or the theoretical parameter. This book brings together thirteen papers concerning aspects of lexical instantiations of Discourse Marking devices, ranging from functional descriptions along cognitive, attitudinal, interactive and structure signalling lines to theoretical issues arising from various properties discourse markers display cross-linguistically. Data from English, Finnish, Hebrew, Korean, and Japanese are examined. Also addressed are questions concerning overall accounts, potential sub-classifications, possible form-function correlations and the appropriateness of such frameworks as Relevance Theory for their description. Interestingly, features evident in the distribution and use of lexical discourse markers are shown to affect the assessment of such theoretical constructs as the distinction between conceptual and procedural meaning. A more sophisticated picture emerges than a simple dichotomy between the two. Studies of the grammar of Discourse Markers hence would have to take the observations and suggestions raised in this collection of papers into account.
Discourse markers and modal particles are fuzzy linguistic categories that are difficult to describe. The contributions in this volume go beyond this statement. They discuss the intersection between modal particles and discourse markers and examine whether or not it is possible to draw a line between these two types of linguistic expressions. On the basis of new synchronic and diachronic data, from speech and writing, from European and Asian languages or cross-linguistically, the authors answer the question whether discourse markers and modal particles are distinct categories, whether they form a cline, or whether modal particles are a subcategory of discourse markers. This common question shows up throughout all chapters, which makes the book to a coherent whole. By disentangling the complexity of categorizing multifunctional expressions, this book also sheds new light on the processes of meaning extension. The traditional discourse and modal functions are complemented by interactional and textual ones. A must read for functional linguists.
