Discourse Markers Across Languages

Discourse Markers Across Languages
Author: Dirk Siepmann
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 390
Release: 2005
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 9780415349499

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.

Discourse Across Languages and Cultures

Discourse Across Languages and Cultures
Author: Carol Lynn Moder
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 378
Release: 2004
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9789027230782

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 and (Dis)fluency

Discourse Markers and (Dis)fluency
Author: Ludivine Crible
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2018-04-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027264309

Spoken language is characterized by the occurrence of linguistic devices such as discourse markers (e.g. so, well, you know, I mean) and other so-called “disfluent” phenomena, which reflect the temporal nature of the cognitive mechanisms underlying speech production and comprehension. The purpose of this book is to distinguish between strategic vs. symptomatic uses of these markers on the basis of their combination, function and distribution across several registers in English and French. Through deep quantitative and qualitative analyses of manually annotated features in the new DisFrEn corpus, this usage-based study provides (i) an exhaustive portrait of discourse markers in English and French and (ii) a scale of (dis)fluency against which different configurations of discourse markers can be diagnosed as rather fluent or disfluent. By bringing together discourse markers and (dis)fluency under one coherent framework, this book is a unique contribution to corpus-based pragmatics, discourse analysis and crosslinguistic fluency research.

The Rise of Discourse Markers

The Rise of Discourse Markers
Author: Bernd Heine
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2021-06-24
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1108995888

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.

NU / NÅ

NU / NÅ
Author: Peter Auer
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 512
Release: 2016-10-24
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110386461

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.

Discourse Markers

Discourse Markers
Author: Deborah Schiffrin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 380
Release: 1987
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780521357180

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.

Discourse Markers

Discourse Markers
Author: Graham Ranger
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2018-02-10
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3319709054

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.

Discourse Markers in Native and Non-native English Discourse

Discourse Markers in Native and Non-native English Discourse
Author: Simone Müller
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2005-01-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9789027253811

While discourse markers have been examined in some detail, little is known about their usage by non-native speakers. This book provides valuable insights into the functions of four discourse markers (so, well, you know and like) in native and non-native English discourse, adding to both discourse marker literature and to studies in the pragmatics of learner language. It presents a thorough analysis on the basis of a substantial parallel corpus of spoken language. In this corpus, American students who are native speakers of English and German non-native speakers of English retell and discuss a silent movie. Each of the main chapters of the book is dedicated to one discourse marker, giving a detailed analysis of the functions this discourse marker fulfills in the corpus and a quantitative comparison between the two speaker groups. The book also develops a two-level model of discourse marker functions comprising a textual and an interactional level.

A Contrastive View of Discourse Markers

A Contrastive View of Discourse Markers
Author: Laure Lansari
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2019-08-08
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3030248968

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.

Metalanguage in Interaction

Metalanguage in Interaction
Author: Yael Maschler
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2009
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027254265

"Metalanguage in Interaction" is about the crystallization of metalanguage employed throughout interaction into the discourse markers which permeate talk. Based on close analysis of naturally-occurring Hebrew conversation, it is a synchronic study of the grammaticization of discourse markers, a phenomenon until now mostly studied from a diachronic perspective. It constitutes the first monograph in the fields of Hebrew interactional linguistics and Hebrew discourse markers. The book first presents what is unique to the present approach to discourse markers and gives them an operational definition. Discourse markers are explored as a system, illuminating their patterning in terms of function, structure, and the moments in interaction at which they are employed. Next, detailed analysis of four Hebrew discourse markers illuminates not only the functions and grammaticization patterns of these markers, but also what they reveal about quintessential aspects of Israeli society, identity, and culture. The conclusion discusses commonalities and differences in the grammaticization patterns of the four markers, and relates the grammaticization of discourse markers from interaction to projectability in discourse.