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 book provides an in-depth look at pragmatic development by second language learners of French through their production of French discourse markers. It showcases a holistic production-focused approach designed to provide a broad picture of learner discourse marker use in French. The book begins with a comprehensive description of the major theoretical frameworks in discourse marker research. It provides a detailed analysis of prior second language research on discourse markers in several languages and the dominant avenues of inquiry. Additionally, this book engages in a discussion of methodology that can serve as a guide for future researchers on the topic. The data presented in this book provide a broad picture of both native speaker and learner production of discourse markers with implications for theoretical and formal understandings of pragmatic meaning. This book will be of particular interest to scholars in pragmatics for both second language acquisition and formal or theoretical perspectives.
"This book provides an in-depth look at pragmatic development by second language learners of French through their production of French discourse markers. It showcases a holistic production-focused approach designed to provide a broad picture of learner discourse marker use in French"--
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 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.
Research in Colonial and Postcolonial Linguistics has experienced a significant increase in contributions from varying fields of language studies, gaining the attention of scholars from all over the world. This volume aims to showcase the variety of topics relevant to the study of language(s) in colonial, postcolonial and decolonial contexts. A main reason of this variety is that the new paradigm invites and necessitates research on different subject matters such as language typology, grammar and cross-linguistics, meta-linguistics and research on language ideology, discourse analysis and pragmatics. The contributions of this volume are selected, peer-reviewed papers which were partly invited and partly given at the First Bremen Conference on Colonial and Postcolonial Linguistics, held in September 2013.
This volume brings together a number of articles on the form and function of extra-clausal constituents, a group of linguistic elements which have puzzled linguists by defying analysis in terms of ordinary sentence grammar. Given their high frequency and communicative importance, these elements can, however, no longer be dismissed as a marginal linguistic phenomenon. In recent years this awareness has resulted not only in more systematic treatments of extra-clausal constituents, but has also highlighted the need to account for them in grammatical theory. Based on (mainly English) corpus data, the volume investigates the discourse-pragmatic, semantic, syntactic and phonological features of a range of extra-clausal constituents, including discourse markers, free adjuncts, left dislocands, insubordinate clauses and various kinds of adverbials. The individual chapters adopt a number of different perspectives, investigating the diachronic development of extra-clausal constituents, their multi-functionality and their use in bilingual settings, also addressing the question of how they can be incorporated into existing models of grammar.
Virtually unstudied until the 1980s, discourse markers have gone on to become a growth industry. Research on markers is central to comprehensive theories of the synchronic linguistic system as such, of the use of language in communication, and of language change. From the very beginning, linguists working on Romance languages have been at the forefront of research on discourse markers. Including among its contributors many of the foremost experts in the field, this volume not only offers substantial state-of-the-art introductions to the diverse facets of contemporary research on discourse markers, with a focus on Romance, but it achieves added value by including in each chapter original and previously unpublished results. The first part of the book addresses foundational issues: What are discourse markers? What is their relationship to other types of pragmatic markers? The second part considers discourse markers at different levels of linguistic description, in particular: their grammatical status, their semantics and pragmatics, their prosodic features, their positioning within discourse units. The third part outlines different approaches to the study of discourse markers, namely contrastive studies, corpus linguistics, discourse traditions, and historical linguistics. The fourth part explores discourse markers at the interface with central topics in linguistics, such as politeness, social variation, language acquisition and psycholinguistic processing. The final part focuses on discourse markers in each of the major Romance languages, namely French, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese and Romanian. The volume will be of interest to researchers and students working in the field of Romance studies, general linguists, pragmaticians, discourse analysts, educationalists, and psychologists.
While the literature on second language acquisition and use is overwhelmingly rich with respect to initial and intermediate stages of development, present knowledge of levels of ultimate attainment that are equal or close to that if native speakers has so far not been presented in a coherent manner. This is what the present volume aims to achieve. In addition to chapters that summarize what is currently known about the grammatical, lexical, and discourse features that continue to exhibit instability at the most advanced levels of second language development, the volume presents overviews of the incipient research on two unique learner populations, polyglots and employees in international call centres. Polyglots, defined as language users who are proficient in six or more second languages, may be considered second language learners par excellence. Call centre employees in economically less developed parts of the world are intriguing in how they cope with the high language proficiency requirements of their job. In conclusion, this book is relevant for all readers - both professionals and students - interested in the development of second language theory. For language teachers, the book provides insights that are profitable in classrooms for advanced learners.
