A discourse-constructional approach to the emergence of discourse markers in English

Lewis, Diana M.

doi:10.1515/ling.2011.013

Cited by 40 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Traugott and Dasher 2002;Brinton 2006;Lewis 2011;Simon-Vandenbergen and Willems 2011;Defour et al 2012), within information structure and rhetorical structure theories (e.g . Redeker 1990;Barton 1995;Umbach 2005;Lewis 2006a, b), from the point of view of relevance theory (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adversative Pragmatic Markers in Learner Language: A Cross-Sectional Perspective

Werner

2017

Corpus Pragmatics

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The intention of this paper is to extend the empirical perspective on the functional acquisition of lexical pragmatic marking in learner English. While previous analyses have mostly focused on speech, and have considered a relatively homogeneous learner population in terms of proficiency, I shed some light on pragmatic marking in written discourse, and at different learner proficiency levels. To this end, I specifically contrast the usage of adversative pragmatic markers (e.g. actually, but, in fact, on the other hand) by beginning/intermediate learners (as represented in the International Corpus of Crosslinguistic Interlanguage) with the one of advanced learners (as represented by material form the International Corpus of Learner English). By way of a quantitative and qualitative analysis, I test when pragmatic markers first emerge in learner language. Factors considered are type of the first language of the learners as well as the patterns of emergence of individual pragmatic markers as well as variation between individual learner groups. In addition, I use data from the Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays as a further point of reference to determine whether and when native-like usage levels are approximated. The overall findings suggest (1) that different patterns of emergence can be observed for individual pragmatic markers (notably the core item but vs. others); (2) that the first-language background of the learners influences the time and rate of acquisition; and (3) that the development of a diversified system of adversative pragmatic marking represents a challenging feature, which is only mastered by advanced students.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adversative Pragmatic Markers in Learner Language: A Cross-Sectional Perspective

Werner

2017

Corpus Pragmatics

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“…We cannot agree with this "spontaneous character" to account for the evolution of discourse markers, because many different studies in different languages have exposed the gradual rise of linguistic expressions as discourse markers (e.g., Brinton 1996;Traugott 1999;Schwenter and Traugott 2000;Waltereit 2002;EversVermeul 2005;Lewis 2007Lewis , 2011Degand andFagard 2011, 2012, to name but a few). For example, a phenomenon that is frequently mentioned in these studies, and that is typical of gradual change, is that of layering (Hopper 1991): the coexistence of older and newer forms for shorter or longer periods.…”

Section: 5mentioning

confidence: 92%

Grammaticalization or pragmaticalization of discourse markers?

Degand

Evers-Vermeul

2015

JHP

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Discourse markers are a crucial component of natural language, which is why a description and account of their diachronic evolution must be part of our linguistic models. However, researchers have different views on whether this evolution should be accounted for in terms of grammaticalization and/or pragmaticalization. In this paper, we provide a structured overview of the accounts given for the diachronic evolution of DMs. It is shown that the different positions encountered in the literature can be brought back to diverging views on the conceptualization of grammar, the categorization of discourse markers, and the weight that is put on specific processes involved in the diachronic change. We provide case studies for each of the positions that we present and discuss.

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“…A similar effect occurs when nog is added to the second part of the construction, the final ook, cf. (35) Lewis (2011) about rather. Sentence-final but has been studied in Beeching (2007: 91-95), Zwicky (2008), Mulder, Thompson &Williams (2009), andHancil (2010).…”

Section: Doublingmentioning

confidence: 97%

10. Dutch particles in the right periphery

Wouden¹,

Foolen²

2015

Final Particles

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IntroductionThis exploratory paper deals with sentence final particles in Dutch. By particles, we mean pragmatic particles: those elements that don't contribute to the propositional content of the sentence (cf. Foolen 1993). As is well known from pragmatic research, such particles are more typical for spoken than for written language. It would, thus, be better to say 'utterance final' than 'sentence final'. The syntagmatic placement of pragmatic particles is variable, within languages (for Dutch, see section 6) and cross-linguistically. English discourse markers typically occur at the beginning of an utterance, German and Dutch modal particles are positioned in the middle field, in classical Greek the particles where attracted by the second position, whereas East Asian languages typically have their pragmatic particles at the end of the utterance. In section 5 we address the question whether there is any typological logic in such language specific preferences. We will argue that it is too early for typological conclusions, as not enough language specific descriptive work has been done. This lack of descriptive research became more and more clear for us while working on the present project: Dutch is not known for its utterance final particles, not even among Dutch linguists, but while searching for the phenomenon in the Spoken Dutch Corpus (CGN), we discovered that in fact there is a wide variety of pragmatic particles to be found at the end of Dutch utterances, as we will show in section 4, where we will illustrate our findings with many examples from this corpus.Given the title of this paper, we should briefly dwell upon the question what do we mean with the term 'right periphery'? At least since Koster (1975), Dutch is considered to be an SOV language. In subordinate clauses, the verbal elements, i.e. the finite verb and/or participles and infinitives, cluster at the end of the clause. In main clauses, this is also the case, albeit with the exception of the finite verb which moves to a position at the beginning of the clause (in generative terms: the C-position, "Verb second"). The SOV character of Dutch does not mean, however, that the verb cluster always constitutes an absolute end of the utterance, as has been shown by a wealth of studies, especially within generative

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A discourse-constructional approach to the emergence of discourse markers in English

Cited by 40 publications

References 3 publications

Adversative Pragmatic Markers in Learner Language: A Cross-Sectional Perspective

Adversative Pragmatic Markers in Learner Language: A Cross-Sectional Perspective

Grammaticalization or pragmaticalization of discourse markers?

10. Dutch particles in the right periphery

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