Discourse-pragmatic Functions Research Articles

Pragmatic Inferences of Locative Enclitics in Luganda

This paper examines the non-locative functions of locative enclitics in Luganda (JE 15). Locative enclitics are words which cannot stand alone but attach on a verb to make meaning. Their status is ambiguous between free word and affix, hence motivating their analysis as enclitics. The enclitics are attached on the post final position of their hosts. Although the locative enclitics occur regularly in some Bantu languages (Luganda, Runyankore-Rukiga, Runyoro- Rutooro, Lunda, Ikizu, Fwe, Chichewa, Kinyarwanda among others), they have not been widely studied in the literature. The paper looks at verbal locative enclitics only but the locative enclitics also appear in other word categories such as adjectives in Luganda. This study is descriptive, with a qualitative approach. The data used in this study comes from reviewing texts in Luganda - novels and plays but also spoken discourses. The enclitic in Luganda serves many non-locative discourse pragmatic functions which include showing urgency, politeness, showing the idea of ‘instead of’ and also emphasis. It has also been observed that enclitics are widely used in the urban youth languages (‘Luyaaye’) but this is not the focus of the current study. The results from the study offer explanations of key areas of syntax, morphology and pragmatics relating to the form and functions of locative enclitics and the whole system of locative marking in Luganda and other Bantu languages.

“No” and “net” as response tokens in English and Russian business discourse: In search of a functional equivalence

The literature on English suggests that turn-initial no fulfils a variety of discourse-pragmatic functions beyond its use as a negative response to polar questions. We cannot assume that the same range or distribution of functions is realised by its nearest Russian equivalent, net . Hence, investigating the contrasts and similarities in the nomenclature and distribution of functions of no and net should pose an important research problem for various discourses, and especially for business discourse with its focus on goal-orientation and productive interpersonal relations requiring adequate interlingual interaction. The study examines how no and net occur in two corpora of spoken business/professional discourse in order to establish their functional comparability and reveal the differences in their use. The article draws on data from the Cambridge and Nottingham Spoken Business English Corpus and the Russian National Corpus analysed using a combination of corpus linguistics, conversation analysis and discourse analytical approaches. Study results show some overlap between the functions of the response particles in English and Russian, and some differences. The findings suggest that no / net display a number of functions connected with conversational continuity, topic management, turn-taking and hedging. The distribution and functions of no/net in the English and Russian data are similar, with the Russian data showing a preference for floor-grabbing no -initiated turns. Translation equivalence is not always fully applicable between no and net . A mixed methodology generates results which suggest that fruitful insights can be gained from English and Russian corpus data. The issues of the use of no and нет in English and Russian business discourses can be further investigated using the suggested data and conclusions.

Diachronic change and synchronic variation of the Chinese discourse marker shishishang

This article discusses shishishang in Mandarin Chinese with three major objectives: (1) to describe the diachronic grammaticalisation process of shishishang from an adverbial phrase to a discourse marker based on the CCL corpus; (2) to investigate the structural and semantic properties of shishishang in Mandarin Chinese; and (3) to analyse the discourse-pragmatic functions of the discourse marker shishishang focusing on its ideational, textual, and interpersonal functions. With the method of corpus retrieval and sorting, this article finds that shishishang, as a discourse marker, has three kinds of functions: semantic connection, textual cohesion, and interpersonal function, which originate from its diachronic development.

Discourse markers in the making

This study examines the discourse-pragmatic functions of the discourse marker (DM, hereafter) jijitsujoo ‘as a matter of practice, practically speaking’ in comparison with another DM jijitsu ‘in fact, the fact is’ in the history of Japanese. The gist of the survey results is that, while jijitsu serves to introduce telling evidence for the preceding statement, jijitsujoo reformulates the preceding statement with what the speaker regards to be relevant, while disregarding irrelevant information. In other words, jijitsujoo plays a more subjective role as a DM than jijitsu in that the former can provide the speaker’s own stance toward an immediate topic. These DM functions can be fully fulfilled in sentence-initial position, presumably because they are connective in essence.

Questioning and answering strategies in Malaysian criminal proceedings

Questioning and answering strategies in Malaysian criminal proceedings

The Expressive Function of the ni que Insubordinate Construction in Spanish

Authors such as Tyler Schnoebelen (on page 12 of his study Emotions are Relational: Positioning and the Use of Affective Linguistic Resources), suggest that in some languages (cf. Navajo), certain dependent clauses are frequently used independently to “mark emotional evaluation and background information”. Evans, in his work on insubordination and its uses, makes use of the term insubordination to refer to this phenomenon. Our study focuses on a particular insubordinate construction introduced by the sequence ni que in Spanish, as in the example [¡Una carta cada día!] Ni que yo fuese Umbral. (CORPES Corpus), used as an independent clause with a sociopragmatic meaning, which is different from that of its subordinate counterpart (cf. No escribiría una carta cada día ni que yo fuese Umbral). Our research questions ask about the potential for ni que to be used as a discourse marker fulfilling an expressive function when it introduces this type of construction, and the derived hypothesis is then oriented to test whether Schnoebelen’s observation about insubordinate constructions also applies to this Spanish construction. In order to test this hypothesis, we performed a functional discourse analysis of more than 2000 concordances (and their extended contexts) in Mark Davies’ Corpus del Español and the Real Academia CORPES XXI. Our findings show that the insubordinate construction differs in function and meaning from its subordinate counterpart, the former fulfilling an emotive function, often combined with other discourse–pragmatic functions, such as evaluation or the organization of discourse.

Pragmatic functions of discourse marker ‘well’ in selected spoken discourse of Philippine English

The present paper investigates the use of the discourse marker “well,” one of the expressions that evoke emotive rather than referential functions. Taking a discourse-pragmatic approach, this study examines the functions of well as a discourse marker in selected spoken discourse of Philippine English. This paper investigates the functions and frequency of the discourse marker well in various speech event categories set in a dialogue and monologue environments. The data for the analysis have been selected from the International Corpus of English – Philippines (ICE-PHI). Also, the study focuses on the spoken component of the ICE-PH, which is one of the least studied dimensions of Philippine English. Further, it employs both quantitative and qualitative analyses while applying the suggested classification proposed by Ran (2003) and Jucker (1993). This study claims that the discourse marker well has several discourse-pragmatic functions in various speaking contexts, including 1) initiating utterance; 2) indicating the speaker's hesitancy; 3) mitigating various Face Threatening Acts; 4) correcting one's utterance; and 5) changing or shifting the current topic, based on 346 cases of well in four different spoken types.

“Oya let’s go to Nigeria”

Abstract This paper examines five bilingual pragmatic markers: oya, ke, ni, walahi, and ba, loaned from indigenous Nigerian languages into Nigerian English, with a view to investigating their sources, meanings, frequencies, spelling stability, positions, collocational patterns and discourse-pragmatic functions. The data for the study were obtained from the International Corpus of English-Nigeria and the Nigerian component of the Global Web-based English corpus. These were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively, using the theory of pragmatic borrowing. The results show that oya, ke, and ni are borrowed from Yoruba, walahi is loaned from Arabic through Hausa and Yoruba while ba is borrowed from Hausa. Oya serves as an attention marker, ke and ni function as emphasis markers, walahi serves as an emphatic manner of speaking marker while ba functions as an attention marker and agreement-seeking marker. The study highlights the influence of indigenous Nigerian languages on the discourse-pragmatic features of Nigerian English.

“Abeg na! we write so our comments can be posted!”

AbstractThis paper examines three borrowed pragmatic markers from Nigerian Pidgin into Nigerian English,abeg, sefandna, with a view to exploring their meanings, frequencies, spelling adaptability, syntactic positions, collocational patterns and discourse-pragmatic functions in Nigerian English. The data which were extracted from the International Corpus of English-Nigeria and the Nigerian component of the corpus of Global Web-based English were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively, using the theory of pragmatic borrowing. The results indicate that the three pragmatic markers differ distinctly in their frequency across text types, syntactic position, the range of pragmatic meanings, the number of spelling variants and their collocations:abegis used as a mitigation marker which can also function as an emphasis marker,sefis an emphasis marker but has additive and dismissive functions, whilenais used purely as an emphasis pragmatic marker. The study shows the influence of Nigerian Pidgin on Nigerian English.

The Value of Non-Referential Gestures: A Systematic Review of Their Cognitive and Linguistic Effects in Children's Language Development.

Speakers produce both referential gestures, which depict properties of a referent, and non-referential gestures, which lack semantic content. While a large number of studies have demonstrated the cognitive and linguistic benefits of referential gestures as well as their precursor and predictive role in both typically developing (TD) and non-TD children, less is known about non-referential gestures in cognitive and complex linguistic domains, such as narrative development. This paper is a systematic review and narrative synthesis of the research concerned with assessing the effects of non-referential gestures in such domains. A search of the literature turned up 11 studies, collectively involving 898 2- to 8-year-old TD children. Although they yielded contradictory evidence, pointing to the need for further investigations, the results of the six studies–in which experimental tasks and materials were pragmatically based–revealed that non-referential gestures not only enhance information recall and narrative comprehension but also act as predictors and causal mechanisms for narrative performance. This suggests that their bootstrapping role in language development is due to the fact that they have important discourse–pragmatic functions that help frame discourse. These findings should be of particular interest to teachers and future studies could extend their impact to non-TD children.

HM and EHM as discourse markers in German WhatsApp chats

The paper studies the discourse-pragmatic functions of hesitation markers such as <hm> and <ehm> in a corpus of text-based German WhatsApp dialogues. The sequential analysis of these markers suggests that they are used by texters to indicate different discourse relations and stances. Responsive <HM> (i.e. markers without a vowel) usually indexes alignment with the current course of action; it frames the following contribution as the preliminary result of a longer thought process, and often invites other users to deliberate the matter at hand. <EHM> (markers with a vowel), in contrast, can also index processing which takes issue with a preceding posting and hence disaligns with the projected course of action. In opposition to recent studies highlighting the conversational nature of WhatsApp dialogues, the analysis shows that texters make use of different levels of incrementality. Prototypically, texters do not deploy <HM> and <EHM> as stand-alone elements of a posting to indicate that they are still deliberating and need more time to produce their next contribution. Rather, they use them as initial framing devices in longer postings actively suspending an incremental exchange of messages. It is argued that these instances should not be classified as hesitation markers, fillers or planners, but should be conceptualised as discourse markers. The results exhibit interesting similarities and dissimilarities to the formal and functional patterns of EHM (אהמ) in Hebrew WhatsApp chats identified by Marmorstein (this collection). The final discussion compares these findings as to how formal variation is exploited in digital discourse.

“So you know ehn … ” The use of bilingual interjections in Nigerian English

Abstract This paper investigates four bilingual interjections: na wa, shikena, ehn, and ehen, with the objective of exploring their sources, meanings, frequencies, spelling stability, positions, collocational patterns and discourse-pragmatic functions in Nigerian English. The data which were obtained from the Nigerian component of the Global Web-based English corpus were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively, using the theory of pragmatic borrowing. The results indicate that na wa, which is loaned from Nigerian Pidgin, is actually a modified form of a Hausa expression, na wahala, shikena is borrowed from Hausa, while ehn and ehen are loaned from Yoruba. Na wa is an emotive interjection, shikena and ehen are cognitive interjections, while ehn can function both as phatic and as emotive interjections. Both ehn and ehen also function as pragmatic markers. The study thus extends research on the discourse-pragmatic features of Nigerian English.

Negative attitudinal uses of quantifying classifier di45 in Wugang Xiang

This paper investigates the extended uses of a Wugang Xiang classifier di45 beyond the referential domain, specifically its attitudinal uses. Using conversational data from Wugang Xiang, a Sinitic variety spoken in south-eastern Hunan province in China, we first examine the uses of di45 within the referential domain, namely, expressing a quantity of small amount and instantiating a noun. We then focus on the attitudinal uses of three types of di45 constructions, namely, relational [N+di45+N], [di45+N], and [di45+DEM+CL+N] constructions. Our analysis indicates that di45 in Wugang Xiang has fully pragmatized into an attitudinal marker in [di45+DEM+CL+N] constructions. We show that the attitudinal function of di45 is induced by one or more of the following factors: (i) the ‘trivialness’ reading inherent in the original use of di45 as a quantifying classifier, (ii) the ‘vagueness’ reading that emerges when di45 is associated with indefinite referents, and (iii) the ‘detachment’ effect which surfaces when di45 is associated with a referent that is obviously definite but with the demonstrative deliberately elided to downgrade potential face-threats to both speaker and others. The findings of this study shed light on how versatile classifiers often extend beyond the referential domain to serve discourse-pragmatic functions.

In the Case of Theme: Topic Identifiers in English and Norwegian Academic Texts

Abstract This paper investigates the use of clause-initial constituents prefaced by topic-identifying expressions such as in terms of, in the case of and their Norwegian counterparts. The focus is on the nature, frequency and discourse functions of these in a corpus of published academic writing in English and Norwegian and across three disciplines. Such expressions are rather infrequent overall, but medicine uses them the least and linguistics the most in both languages. The functions of the construction can be compared either to those of left dislocation or to other types of clause-initial adverbials depending on the degree of coreference between the theme and some element in the rheme. The pattern with coreference is more common in Norwegian than in English. Generally, topic identifiers are used for announcing explicitly a theme that represents a topic shift or a contrast with the preceding discourse. The study contributes to contrastive pragmatics through its focus on the discourse-pragmatic functions of the expressions under study and the cross-linguistic comparison of this type of information structuring device across different disciplines of academic writing.

한국어 모국어, 계승어 및 비계승어 화자의 인칭대명사 ‘우리’의 사용양상 비교 연구

This study provides a sociocultural account on whether heritage and non-heritage Korean speakers use the first person plural pronoun wuli ‘we’ in the same way as native Korean speakers do. Previous studies claim that wuli is used to refer to the speaker’s in-group, and the concept of ‘ingroup’ is utilized to account for its functions. To make a sociocultural comparison of the uses of wuli by native and (non-)heritage Korean speakers, the study collected and analysed the conversation data from (non-)heritage Korean speakers in the USA and Japan. It turns out that native, heritage and non-heritage Korean speakers use the pronoun wuli differently for different discourse-pragmatic functions.

Semantic interpretations and discourse-pragmatic functions of double-le in Mandarin Chinese

Semantic interpretations and discourse-pragmatic functions of double-le in Mandarin Chinese

Discourse-Pragmatic Functions of Non-cannonical Word Order in English and their Recognition by English Native Speakers

Discourse-Pragmatic Functions of Non-cannonical Word Order in English and their Recognition by English Native Speakers

General extenders and discourse variation

AbstractThe present study accounts for the use of general extenders (GEs) in spoken and written registers. The repertoire and usage of GEs is analysed in Lithuanian by focusing on their distribution across different registers, their structural properties, and discourse-pragmatic functions. The study is based on a reference corpus of Lithuanian, which includes four subcorpora of written discourse and a subcorpus of spoken discourse. The findings indicate that there are some significant cross-generic differences in GE frequency, but most frequently GEs in Lithuanian are used in written academic discourse. With regard to the structural types of GEs, adjunctives are considerably more frequent than disjunctives. GE structure allows for a large degree of variation, and in spoken interaction GEs can include deictic elements. Concerning discourse-pragmatic functions, GEs are predominantly used to serve textual and interpersonal functions, which appear to be strongly related to the structural type of the GE and discourse settings.

The Present Perfect Puzzle in US-American English: an FDG Analysis

Abstract This paper examines the rare but well-attested combinations of the Present Perfect with definite temporal adverbials denoting past time in US-American English. The goal of this paper is twofold. For one thing, it outlines the disemous analysis FDG proposes for the form have + past participle in its prototypical use, arguing that two different operators can reliably trigger this form, one marking anteriority and one encoding phasal resultativeness. For another, it shows how, via synchronic inferential mechanisms, the Present Perfect may have absorbed discourse pragmatic functions that now permit the felicitous use of definite temporal adverbials together with the Present Perfect in certain contexts. It is argued that this combination has routinized, taking over certain functions typically associated with the Present Perfect in a manner that suggests this development as potentially part of a grammaticalization process. The paper proposes that they are not as such part of the function the Present Perfect encodes, but that they currently represent a switch stage in the development of the US-American Present Perfect. It further suggests that in this switch stage, the combination of the Present Perfect with an adverb specifying past reference can be read as signaling the relationship between two Discourse Acts as justificational or can encompass the temporal specification as a necessary part of the action that is then available for a Resultative reading.

Discourse-pragmatic functions of the present perfect in American English TV and radio interviews

Abstract The English present perfect has received a great deal of sentence-based analytical attention in the empirical linguistic literature as well as some corpus-based coverage at the discourse level, in which analysis depends on close scrutiny of the context of a structure’s placement, i.e. several utterances, turns at talk, or sentences before and after. Due to the painstaking nature of such analysis, however, corpora used to date have been relatively small. This study, via a corpus of over 12 million words from television and radio interviews in the United States, categorizes the use of discourse-pragmatic functions of 268 present perfect tokens. From this analysis, one use stood out overwhelmingly: the present perfect in the employment of position-taking or support. Also, only very rarely was the present perfect used to initiate narratives, which is a finding that does not conform to previous understandings. The study contributes to the overall knowledge of present perfect use and has implications for how the tense can be taught to English language learners.