Pragmatic Markers Research Articles

Beyond questions: Non-interrogative uses of ano ‘what’ in Tagalog

This paper examines the patterns of occurrence of the Tagalog question word ano ‘what’ in natural conversation. Contextual analysis of approximately 6 h of transcribed conversational data demonstrates that ano is used not only for interrogative but also non-interrogative uses, including functions such as rhetorical questioning and expressing negative stance, and as a generic pronominal, placeholder, filler, backchannel particle, confirmation particle, and assertive mood marker, each deviating from the interrogative use in one way or another in terms of morphosyntax, interactional behavior, and utterance prosody. Quantitative analysis of its functional distribution reveals that the non-interrogative uses of ano appear more frequently than the interrogative use, with the placeholder use being most frequent. Findings from this study shed light on descriptive and theoretical issues related to polysemy (as manifested in the polysemy network of ano with the placeholder use being basic), constructionalization (as seen in the recruitment of formulaic ano expressions as pragmatic markers), and the asymmetry between left periphery and right periphery (as evidenced in the correlation between syntactic location and discourse function, e.g., disaffiliative ano at left periphery vs. confirmational ano at right periphery). Whether other languages exhibit similar, different, or varied behavior with respect to their interrogative constructions deserves further study from both discourse-pragmatic and typological perspectives.

Hesitative markers <i>eto</i> and <i>eto samoe</i>: structural and temporal aspects

The article discusses the structural and temporal aspects of the hesitative pragmatic markers eto ( ‘whatsit' ) and eto samoe ( ‘whatchamacallit' ). Pragmatic markers, filling in hesitation pauses in speech, fulfill a hesitative function in spontaneous spoken discourse and include a wide range of structurally different units: eto ( ‘whatsit' ), eto samoe ( ‘whatchamacallit' ), kak ego/eyo/ikh ( ‘whatshisname, whatshername, whatretheirnames' ), chto eshcho ( ‘what else' ), etc. As can be seen, by structure, hesitative markers are divided into words, word-combinations, and sentences; however, the sound duration of such markers remains uninvestigated. Considering the characteristics of speech rate in the hesitative markers with various structure - eto ( ‘whatsit' ) and eto samoe ( ‘whatchamacallit' ), - it is possible to test the hypothesis of the tendency to isochronism of speech units and to reveal the mean duration of the hesitative markers. The material for the analysis was approximately 100 contexts of use of the markers eto and eto samoe from the corpus of everyday Russian speech “One Day of Speech”. As a result of analyzing these markers, the mean sound duration of both markers themselves and one syllable in them was obtained. At the syllabic level, the tendency to isochronism was confirmed: one syllable in longer markers forms is pronounced slightly faster than in shorter forms - on average, 25 ms faster, and their structure turned out to be inversely proportional to their sound duration. The perspective of the study is to compare the sound duration of other hesitative markers, as well as to study the speech rate in pragmatic markers and content words, which, due to the hesitative function of markers, may differ from the rate in content units homophonic to markers.

Powerful "Little Words" in Contact and in Context: Pragmatic Markers in Kweyol Donmnik, English, and French

Powerful "Little Words" in Contact and in Context: Pragmatic Markers in Kweyol Donmnik, English, and French

Об особенностях построения устного монолога-описанияна родном и неродном языке: начало текста (на материале описаний комикса Х. Бидструпа «Эликсир для волос»)

The article is devoted to a comparative analysis of the beginnings of spontaneous monologic descriptions and their peculiarities. The descriptions were recorded from 8 Russian and 20 Chinese informants when speaking in Russian, i.e. when speaking in the native and non-native language, respectively. All texts are descriptions of Herluf Bidstrup’s comic strip Elixir for Hair, which represents a series of 13 interconnected pictures telling a story of a bald man. This material is part of the corpus of Russian monologic speech created at Saint Petersburg State University and known as the Balanced Annotated Text Library (SAT). The main research method is comparative. The description of the material was performed at the levels of discourse and structure, it is provided with quantitative data and correlations with the characteristics of the informants: social characteristics – gender and the level of Russian language proficiency (for the Chinese) – and psychological characteristics (extroverts / ambiverts / introverts). The analysis of the material showed that the construction of a monologic description is determined by a number of lexical, cultural, and individual factors. The spontaneity of such a monologue is determined by the fact that the ideal three-part structure (beginning – main part – ending) is not always realized. Among the beginnings in the analyzed material, two types were identified: verbal (nominative themes, ‘fabulous-narrative’ beginning, starting pragmatic marker) and non-verbal (hesitation, paralinguistics), as well as their combinations. The most common way to indicate the beginning of a monologue for the Russian and Chinese informants was hesitation-vocalization. The Chinese prefer the verbal beginning, especially constructions with nominative themes and ‘fabulous-narrative’ beginnings, while the Russians prefer starting pragmatic markers. The results of the analysis can be useful both for colloquialistics (the theory of colloquial speech) and for the practice of teaching Russian as a foreign language (linguodidactics).

Лингвопрагматические сдвиги в новейшей поэзии: русско-американские параллели

The paper dwells upon the language and discourse processes in contemporary Russian and American poetry which focuses on “reformatting” the communicative situation coordinates under the influence of ordinary speech and the new media. The research suggests a linguo-pragmatic analysis of three Russian-American poetic vectors that characterize different strategies of subjectification, such as Gennady Aygi — Michael Palmer, Arkadii Dragomoshchenko — Barrett Watten, and Rachel Blau DuPlessis — Nika Skandiaka. These poetic practices manifest themselves in constructing a new communicative situation based on a referential shift along the lines of interiorization — exteriorization. Elaborating on this shift, we explore the interaction between inner speech, ordinary and poetic language, as well as the links between a poetic text and external (media)context. The unusual usage of pragmatic markers forms a new “poetic interface” and indicates the “transcoding” of the poetic subject in the coordinates of the actual communicative situation. Aygi and Palmer create different modes of poetic interface as a zone of active interaction between the addresser and the addressee, as well as inner speech, ordinary, and poetic language. In Dragomoshchenko’s and Watten’s poems, the “transcoding” of the subject manifests itself in various deictic shifts that mark complex relations of the subject with reality and language. The use of “graphic deixis” in DuPlessis’ and Skanidaka’s texts is informed by the impact of the Internet as a need to update the poetic statement in a new media-communicative situation.

Прагматичні особливості заголовків наукових статей (на матеріалі фахового видання "Ефективна економіка")

The article proves that the success of a scientific article is not only ensured by high-quality material, properly and logically structured according to the requirements of scientific publications and standards of scientific writing, but also by a well-chosen title, which has pragmatic potential. The article considers the experience of Ukrainian linguists, who studied a title in the structural, semantic and stylistic, pragmatic perspectives on the material of English and German-language scientific articles. It was found that the pragmatic potential of Ukrainian-language titles of scientific publications requires careful and comprehensive study. 162 titles of scientific articles published in the professional journal "Effective Economics" were analyzed. It was identified that the authors’ intensions to update the theoretical aspects of the study of scientific phenomena are few, but the desire to focus the attention of recipients on the ways of applying theoretical knowledge in order to solve practical problems in various branches of the economy is evident. The authors use pragmatic markers of the modern approaches, tools, strategies, assessment, opportunities, perspectives, improvement, effectiveness, optimization to focus on significant aspects of the problem, on specific ways and means of its solution, on the prospects of further science problem research. The research results showed that the authors of scientific publications implement different pragmatic intentions depending on the object, subject, research material as well as the theme of scientific publications.

The sociopragmatic nature of interjections in Early Modern English drama comedy

Abstract Interjections have been studied for all periods in the history of English, ranging from the study of Old English exclamations such as hwaet (Brinton 2017) to the pragmatic functions of forms such as oops in Present Day English (Lutzky and Kehoe 2017). The Early Modern English (EModE) period represents a turning point as it witnessed an increase in dialogic and speech-related text types, including drama comedy and trial proceedings. Nevertheless, despite recent advances in the compilation and especially the sociopragmatic annotation of corpora, EModE pragmatic markers have not been studied extensively over the last decade. This article addresses this gap by offering an investigation into the sociopragmatic nature of interjections in EModE drama comedy. It is based on the sociopragmatically annotated Drama Corpus which includes a total of 242,561 words from the period 1500 to 1760. Taking a data-driven, form-to-function mapping approach, this study explores the use of interjections in the Drama Corpus with a focus on their distribution according to sociopragmatic variables. The aim of this study is to contribute to reaching a more comprehensive understanding of pragmatic marker use in EModE.

Teaching the pragmatics of English as an international language: A focus on pragmatic markers

The current era of globalization and emergence of English as an international language (EIL) has brought about new opportunities for L2 pragmatic learning and teaching. The common view of pragmatic learning as an approximation to native-likeness is changing towards conceiving pragmatic ability as a tool to interact with people of different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, the majority of whom are non-native speakers (NNSs) of English. While such reality is widely acknowledged, few attempts have been made to teach pragmatic competence in EIL. Addressing this concern, the present study investigates the effects that a pedagogical intervention on EIL pragmatics has on the oral use of pragmatic markers (PMs): a key tool for successful communication in the current increasingly multicultural and multilingual society. Seventy-three Spanish EFL students were divided into an instructional ( n = 34) and a control group ( n = 39). The instructional group received 4 interventional sessions that included (1) awareness of the legitimacy of EIL, (2) meta-pragmatic awareness of pragmatic behavior across the world, (3) task-supported instruction on PMs, and (4) strategy-based instruction. Pragmatic competence was assessed by students’ use of PMs in oral academic presentations. The results revealed that the instructional group had more significant changes in the frequency and variety of PMs used than the control one, as they widened the repertoire of PMs uttered in their academic presentations. These findings project the future of pragmatic instruction in EIL and provide directions for reorienting the EIL curriculum towards the integration of L2 pragmatics.

Exploring Bohdan Lepky’s Translation Ethics Using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count

The present empirical study aims to outline ethical landmarks of Bohdan Lepky, the renowned Ukrainian writer and translator, in his Ukrainian translation of Salomé by Oscar Wilde. We assess the ethics of translation data defined by Kalina (2015) in terms of accuracy, impartiality, and confidentiality. In order to address these ethical issues, the study envisaged the following steps. First, source and target texts were analyzed using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) computerized program based on its built-in French 2007 and Ukrainian 2015 dictionaries. Second, all 'style words' (Tausczik & Pennebaker, 2010) represented by functional words, e.g., conjunctions, prepositions, and pronouns that bear procedural meaning, were compared in both texts. Findings showed that the translator followed the ethical "tradition of sameness" (Wyke, 2011), being less "visible" (Venuti, 1995) in his target language version. Despite a greater number of impersonal pronouns causing slight implicitation, we observed no traces of simplification or explicitation deforming tendencies in Lepky's translated text. Similar indices of conjunctions and prepositions, and the average number of words per sentence in both texts, confirmed the accuracy of meaning and style. Although markers of oral speech (fillers) prevailed in translation, this strategy manifests his agency and attempt to be ethically "accountable" for his product in the sense of Schlesinger’s (1989) "equalizing." This shift moves along the oral-literate continuum towards more natural, i.e., rich in pragmatic discourse markers (Schiffrin, 1989) oral communication. The LIWC psychological category of "affect" filled with emotionally charged words was less dense in the Ukrainian version, contributing both to the translator's "ethics of difference" (Venuti, 1999) and his impartiality. Thus, results of the LIWC-processed data demonstrated high ethical standards of translating Bohdan Lepky met in his Ukrainian rendition of Salomé by Oscar Wilde.
 Acknowledgements
 This research was made possible through funds from The Remeza Family Research and Publications Grant 2021-2022, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta, Canada.

Die Komparativ- und Superlativformen besser/am besten/das Beste als Varianten in modalen Vergleichskonstruktionen

It is well known that linguistic variants play a key role in the acquisition of language skills in the first, second or foreign language as well as in writing and translation processes and in general in communicative interactions. Thus, a major research goal is the systematic investigation of intra- and interlinguistic variation. Due to its complexity, its qualitative-quantitative analysis continues to be a challenging issue, but it seems to become more and more feasible thanks to both the possibility of compiling very large corpora and the availability of high-performing corpus-linguistic tools.
 The paper discusses a corpus-linguistic pilot study concerning the use of besser, am besten and das Beste as pragmatic markers in a cross-linguistic perspective. In particular, the analysis focusses on selected superlative and comparative constructions on the left periphery used for expressing advice. The data basis consists mainly of German and Italian comparable very large web corpora and, to a lesser extent, of bilingual sentence pairs drawn from parallel corpora. As will be shown, even restricting the analysis to a very small segment of microvariation, in both languages the modal constructions appear to be characterized by the combination of numerous overlapping and interplaying variants and by different tendencies in language use.

"dit en dat" en "al daai goed": 'n Korpuslinguistiese ondersoek na pragmatiese merkers in gesproke Afrikaans

Pragmatiese merkers is 'n frekwente verskynsel van gesproke taal. Daar is egter nog baie min studies onderneem na pragmatiese merkers in Omgangsafrikaans. Pragmatiese merkers tree op as belangrike kontekstualiseringswenke deurdat dit gespreksgenote rig in terme van die relevansie van die uiting, en die spreker in staat stel om, op bondige wyse, 'n houding teenoor die proposisie van die uiting te openbaar. In hierdie studie word gefokus op 'n bepaalde tipe pragmatiese merker, naamlik vaekategoriemerkers (VKM's). Vaekategoriemerkers in Afrikaans is 'n meerwoordige leksikale eenheid, of woordkluster, wat as pragmatiese merker optree, byvoorbeeld "en goed" en "of iets". Hierdie ondersoek het ten doel om aan die hand van korpuslinguistiese metodes te bepaal watter vaekategoriemerkers in Omgangsafrikaans gebruik word en watter pragmatiese funksies dit verrig.

The Pragmatic Functions of Facebook Likes on Status Updates: Evidence from User Perceptions

This paper examines the pragmatic functions of the like button when users interact with status-updates on Facebook. To collect the data, the researcher asked a friend who happened to be a university professor to write a post on his Facebook account in which he requested his students, colleagues and friends to report to him in a comment when each of them tends to press the like button on a status and for what purpose. The total number of the collected comments is 218. Analysis of the data reveals that in the Jordanian context, the like button is not solely used to show appreciation as originally envisaged by Facebook. Further, the findings indicate that the use of the like button has eventually developed as a graphic pragmatic marker with eight functions and illocutions ranging in purpose from showing unreserved approval and admiration of content to showing mockery of published content. Keywords: Computer-Mediated Communication; Emojis, Gestures; Like; Pragmatic Functions.

To see as a marker of contextual salience in romance languages : evidence from Acadian French and Brazilian Portuguese

This paper discusses constructions found in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and Acadian French (AF), in which the equivalents of to see accompanies a second verb in imperative utterances. In these constructions in BP and AF to see emphasizes the command expressed by the other verb. The BP construction can also have an additional interpretation, in which ve ‘seeimperative,2,singular’ has the meaning ‘to verify’. It is proposed that BP constructions can be associated to two different structures. The constructions with the ‘to verify’ meaning are treated as biclausal structures in which the verb ver ‘to see’ selects for a CP headed by the complementizer se ‘if’. As for the analysis of the emphatic order meaning associated to the BP and AF constructions, we adopt the proposals put forth in Speas & Tenny (2003) and Hill (2007, 2014) according to which conversational pragmatics is encoded in syntax as a predicative structure (Speech Act Projection - SAP) above CP. Following these ideas, we analyze BP and AF emphatic order constructions as monoclausal structures, where ve in BP and voir in AF are injunctive pragmatic markers that are externally merged into the SA head in order to encode a pragmatic relation.

Pragmatic markers and events on social media in new habit era of COVID-19 outbreak

The phenomenon of language use in social media is interesting and important because it can describe positive or negative language use. The purpose of the study was to analyze the pragmatic markers and forms of language use on social media in the era of new habits during the COVID 19 outbreak. The research method used a qualitative approach. The results of the study are: (1) religious markers, (2) pronoun markers, (3) interjection markers, and (4) appreciation markers. The form of pragmatics consists of, (1) the form of syntax, (2) the form of discourse, and (3) the form of strategy. Conclusion (1). Positive utterances from speakers are responded to by positive and negative utterances from speech partners, while (2). Negative speech from the speaker is responded to by negative speech from the speech partner. (3). The pragmatic markers and forms of speech by speakers are 50% positive and 50% negative, while the pragmatic markers and forms of speech partners are 30% positive and 70% negative. (4). Positive pragmatic markers and forms are important to be used by speakers and speech partners so that they will have an impact on positive and healthy social media.

The acquisition of pragmatic markers in the foreign language classroom: An experimental study on the effects of implicit and explicit learning

This study discusses the results of an experimental study on the usage of pragmatic markers (PMs) by adolescent German-speaking L2 learners of English in the foreign language classroom. The experiment measured the success of PM usage skills under explicit and implicit learning conditions based on input flood, compared to a control group that received no training on the use of PMs. Competence in using PMs was measured with communicative tasks in a pretest (immediately prior to the experiment) and a posttest (one day after the training). The results, which derive from spoken conversational data collected from 18 advanced learners of English in a high school context, show that short-term effects as regards usage frequency and diversity of PMs could be reached only for the learners who underwent explicit teaching, who showed a significant increase in the frequency of use of PMs in conversational L2 speech and expanded the range of PMs beyond the set of PMs that had been used before the training. The results raise intriguing questions regarding the learnability of conversational routines in L2 acquisition.

High Red Cell Distribution Width and Low Absolute Lymphocyte Count Associate With Subsequent Mortality in HCV Infection.

Background:Hepatitis-C virus (HCV) chronic infection can lead to cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), end-stage liver disease, cardiovascular disease (CVD), and mortality. Transient Elastography (TE) is used to non-invasively assess fibrosis. Whether immune monitoring provides additive prognostic value is not established. Increased red-cell distribution width (RDW) and decreased absolute lymphocyte count (ALC) predict mortality in those without liver disease. Whether these relationships remain during HCV infection is unknown.Materials and Methods:A retrospective cohort of 1,715 single-site VA Liver Clinic patients receiving Transient Elastography (TE) 2014-2019 to evaluate HCV-associated liver damage were evaluated for RDW and ALC in relation to traditional parameters of cardiovascular risk, liver health, development of HCC, and mortality.Results:The cohort was 97% male, 55% African American, 26% with diabetes mellitus, 67% with hypertension, and 66% with tobacco use. After TE, 3% were subsequently diagnosed with HCC, and 12% (n=208) died. Most deaths (n=189) were due to non-liver causes. The TE score associated with prevalent CVD, positively correlated with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) 10-Year Risk Score, age, RDW, and negatively correlated with ALC. Patients with anisocytosis (RDW above 14%) or lymphopenia (ALC level under 1.2×109/L) had greater subsequent all-cause mortality, even after adjusting for age, TE score, and comorbidities. TE score, and to a modest degree RDW, were associated with subsequent liver-associated mortality, while TE score, RDW, and ALC were each independently associated with non-liver cause of death.Conclusion:Widely available mortality calculators generally require multiple pieces of clinical information. RDW and ALC, parameters collected on a single laboratory test that is commonly performed, prior to HCV therapy may be pragmatic markers of long-term risk of mortality.

Pragmatic Marker I Pray in Early Modern English

Te article deals with the sentences that contain pragmatic marker I pray you / thee and its variants as a parenthetical clause. Te linguistic material for synchronic analysis is taken from the texts of the plays written by the English authors during the 16−17th centuries. Te examination of the lexicalgrammatical and stylistic characteristics of the structures under analysis shows that the greatest variety of the marker forms is achieved at the beginning of the period under consideration. Te following processes are seen to be the sources of the diversity: the increase of expression by means of an adverb (now, still, hartyly) or a modal verb, the change of the pronunciation of the constituent words followed by modifcations of their representation in the text (comes into I prythee with variants prithee, pr’ythee), the elimination of subject and / or object (resulting in the forms pray, pray you, I pray). Towards the end of the period under consideration, in the second half of the 17th century, the diversity of the variants of the marker decreases, predominantly the following structures continue to exist: I pray, pray and I prythee. Te parenthetical clause is studied in diachrony as well. Te forms of the marker constituents, the peculiarities of the marker word order, the position of the clause in the sentences, the combination with other pragmatic markers are compared with the sentences from the texts of the 14−15th centuries.

Mechanisms of meaning making in the co-occurrence of pragmatic markers with silent pauses

AbstractThis study explores the social meanings of unfilled pauses, you know, like, and combinations thereof by comparing the evaluation of speech with these features to speech without them. The comparison is based on a set of perception surveys in which participants listened to manipulated audio stimuli and rated them on a series of scales. Unfilled pauses are evaluated differently from all other features: they are rated high on Status and low on Dynamism. Where significant differences emerge, the pragmatic markers you know, like, and combinations of pauses with these are always rated lower than the guises without. They are most sensitive to personal characteristics in the Dynamism dimension, followed by Conversational Skills, Likeability, and Status. The mechanism that adapts the potential social meanings of linguistic features when they are combined hinges on the social salience of the features in question. Various outcomes are possible ranging from additive to non-additive effects. (Like, you know, attitudes, social meanings, prestige, solidarity, dynamism)

The development of interlanguage pragmatic markers in alignment with role relationships

Abstract Studies on the development of interlanguage pragmatic markers (PMs) have attracted increasing interest recently. However, little research is available on the PM dynamic development in alignment with English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) classroom contexts. Given the lacuna, this article, based on the Complexity and the Alignment theories, investigates how PMs develop and how aligning with film-situated un/equal role relationships influences development. The study with eight data collection points tracks 28 EFL learners’ PM production over around 1.5 year. Results revealed: (1) the employed PM functions fluctuated but developed from singular to multiple, with the interpersonal function use being regressive and the structural and the cognitive, progressive; (2) the PM development manifested a significant gain in aligning with the equal role relationships; and (3) different proficiency learners had dissimilar PM development. These findings corroborate the view of context-dependent dynamic development and provide strong evidence for aligning EFL learning with various role relationships.

Grammaticalization in action and beyond

Abstract As a result of the rapid development of en plan in contemporary Spanish a wide range of recent studies have paid attention to the grammaticalization process transforming this adverbial locution (meaning ‘in a certain way, with a certain purpose’) into a pragmatic marker. However, previous research fails to capture the complex semantic networks and synchronic multifunctionality of en plan. The present study takes on a polygrammaticalization mechanism and describes two main sets of clines. The first set of clines concerns the evolution of en plan into a mitigation device; the second set deals with its grammaticalization as an intensifier. Moreover, the recently defined discursive mechanism of cooptation is thoroughly applied for the first time to Spanish. The contribution deals with written and oral data from different geographical varieties and gives support to a “grammaticalization-cooptation-grammaticalization” hypothesis in the emergence of en plan as a brand-new pragmatic marker in Spanish.