scholarly journals „Vor allem – da erste Gedanke is ja oft auch gar nicht so gmeint“ Operatoren zur Charakterisierung des kommunikativen und mentalen Status von Äußerungen im sozialen Raum

2021 ◽  
Vol 110 (5) ◽  
pp. 229-258
Author(s):  
Ann Kathrin Fischer ◽  
Kristina Herbert

This paper investigates discursive structures of spoken language in formal and informal communication settings (almost 62 hours of recorded time) of urban speakers in Austria’s two biggest cities Vienna and Graz and their surroundings. We focus on so-called bipartite “Operator-Skopus-Strukturen” (‘operator-scope-structures’), examining their pragmatic and discourse organising function within specific conversational situations. Our main aim is to offer in-depth analyses of these structures by characterising the mental and communicative status of such utterances. Starting out with a discussion of characteristics of spoken language research, especially by arguing for the replacement of the grammatical concept of sentences with the interactional concept of turn-constructional units, we address the phenomenon of discourse markers and Operator-Skopus-Strukturen in particular. This is followed by the description of our data set and the subsequent analyses and discussion of the selected examples. According to our findings, Operator-Skopus-Strukturen appear in both conversational settings and among all groups of speakers. We demonstrate that all speakers use the structures with the same pragmatic function of giving information to their conversation partner on how to interpret and understand the message behind the utterance. Within this scope, the speaker’s intention can vary depending on the conversation partner, the topic of the conversation or the situation.

2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-217
Author(s):  
Jorie Soltic

In this paper, I argue that the first-person singular of the “ordinary” verb λέγω/λαλῶ (‘I say’) in the thirteenth- to fourteenth-century political verse narratives Chronicle of Morea and War of Troy does not always carry its “normal”, representational content (‘I inform/assure [you]’). Frequently, λέγω/λαλῶ structures the discourse rather than conveying conceptual meaning and, thus, has procedural meaning. In this respect, the verb can be compared to modern discourse markers (i.e., semantically reduced items which abound in spoken language). An important − yet not decisive − criterion to distinguish the conceptual from the procedural use is the position of λέγω/λαλῶ: all “DM-like” examples are parenthetical. As for their precise pragmatic function, these forms are used, in particular, to signal a clarification towards the listener (“I mean”) or, more generally, to grab the attention of the audience. Applied to the modern binary distinction between interpersonal and textual discourse markers, they thus belong to the former category. Finally, I tentatively relate the observation that the procedural parenthetical examples show a marked preference for pre-caesural position to the concept of “filled pauses”, which makes sense given the adopted oral style of the Late Medieval Greek political verse narratives.


2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-102
Author(s):  
Maher Bahloul

This paper is a pilot study on the form and function of the Arabic discourse marker ‘ṭabʕan’. Discourse markers in language have been the focus of myriad studies under a number of denotations such as discourse operators, discourse connectives, modal markers, cue phrases, amongst several others. While such markers occur in written and spoken forms of language, they are much more abundant in formal and informal conversations. ṭabʕan, for instance, is observed in media Arabic in formal and semi-formal contexts. The paper highlights its formal features, its syntactic distribution, and identifies its core pragmatic function. Although the marker does not change the truth value of utterances or alter them in any significant way, it tends to cluster around the speaker. Thus, it injects some modal features oscillating between assertiveness and evidentiality.


2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-140
Author(s):  
Zhou Mingqiang

Pragmatic function and cognitive characteristics of discourse markers of complaintsDiscourse markers of complaints, mainly including ‘zhēnshì/yě zhēnshì’ (‘really / is really’), ‘zhēnshìde /yě zhēnshìde’ (‘really / is really’), ‘hébì ne’ (‘why bother’), ‘hékǔ ne’ (‘why bother’), ‘zhìyù mā’ (‘need you …’), ‘nǐ kàn nǐ’ (‘look at you’), ‘bù shì wǒ shuō nǐ’ (‘I want to remind you’), ‘bù shì wǒ V nǐ’ (‘I want to VERB you’), ‘kàn / qiáo nǐ shuōde’ (‘well, listen to you’), ‘nǐ zhè ge / zhè zhǒng rén a’ (‘oh, the likes of you’), ‘zài zěnme shuō’ (‘anyway’), etc., express complaint feelings.The pragmatic frame of discourse markers of complaints includes WHOM, WHY and WHAT, among which WHOM and WHAT are two vital factors. People usually complain in three cases: first is to complain behind the back of an interlocutor, which is graver than the second, to complain face to face; third is to complain about oneself, which is usually in a light way or just to boast with sly humor. The cause of complaints is sometimes identical to the content to be complained about, including complaining interlocutors’ behavior and its consequences, interlocutors’ thought and speech, among which the complaints about interlocutors’ behaviors and its consequences are more common than the complaints about interlocutors’ thought and speech. Different discourse markers of complaints might intensify, weaken or even alleviate the complaining feelings. Depending on different complaining interlocutors and the content to be complained about, the speakers choose corresponding discourse markers of complaints to make the complaining content fit their feelings. The sentiments of complaints can be classified into following categories: the first is a self-compliment, a false complaint concealing actual praise; the second is caring displeasure, a tender complaint with sympathy, friendliness and affection to remind the addresser of inappropriateness; the third is blaming in different degrees, a complaint of criticism with an excuse in a stern tone, or that of disapproval with no excuse in the same tone, or that of mocking in a teasing tone, as well as that of self-reproach, of persuasion, of rejection, of marked ellipsis with no gist and ground of the blame, etc. The sentiments of complaint may be expressed with the marked speech with criticism and blame at the fore, while the marked speech is indispensible from the changeable context of complaints due to a wide variety of complainees.The objects to be complained about can be the interlocutors, the speaker him/herself and the facts. When the object to be complained about is the interlocutor, the speaker may complain to them face to face, or behind their back; when an object to be complained about is facts, the complaints will be with a lighter tone, and only with comments and descriptions on the facts; when the object to be complained about is the speaker him/herself, the complaints will be with lightest tone. The discourse markers of complaints are usually used in the negative contexts, mainly by 4 means: first is to use negative sentences, second is to use contrast expressions, third is to use rhetorical questions, fourth is to use some other special expression, such as Chinese idioms ‘duì niú tán qín’ (‘play the lute to a cow’), ‘diū rén xiàn yǎn’ (‘disgraced’) etc., or commentary adverbs, such as ‘chàdiǎner’ (‘almost’), ‘jiǎnzhí’ (‘simply’), ‘lǎoshì’ (‘always’), ‘hébì’ (similar to ‘why must...’),or sentence constructions with negative connotation, such as ‘lián…dōu’,‘gēnběn bù…’,‘yě tài…’ etc. When discourse markers are used in the negative contexts, the scale of complaining tone is like this (from heavy to light): rhetorical question sentence > negative sentence > contrast sentence > other sentence.To choose the right discourse markers of complaints, the speakers must correctly understand the functions of the corresponding discourse markers. Meanwhile, listeners can catch the speakers’ real implication by seizing the characteristics of the discourse markers of complaints.The discourse markers of complaints can be researched in terms of the following aspects: the impacts of contexts, the common and distinct functions of the complaint markers, and the convergence of cognition on the pragmatic function.


2001 ◽  
Vol 4 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 29-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Antinoro Pizzuto ◽  
Paola Pietrandrea

This paper focuses on some of the major methodological and theoretical problems raised by the fact that there are currently no appropriate notation tools for analyzing and describing signed language texts. We propose to approach these problems taking into account the fact that all signed languages are at present languages without a written tradition. We describe and discuss examples of the gloss-based notation that is currently most widely used in the analysis of signed texts. We briefly consider the somewhat paradoxical problem posed by the difficulty of applying the notation developed for individual signs to signs connected in texts, and the more general problem of clearly identifying and characterizing the constituent units of signed texts. We then compare the use of glosses in signed and spoken language research, and we examine the major pitfalls we see in the use of glosses as a primary means to explore and describe the structure of signed languages. On this basis, we try to specify as explicitly as possible what can or cannot be learned about the structure of signed languages using a gloss-based notation, and to provide some indications for future work that may aim to overcome the limitations of this notation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 148 (4) ◽  
pp. 2746-2746
Author(s):  
Melissa M. Baese-Berk ◽  
Kaori Idemaru ◽  
Vsevolod Kapatsinski ◽  
Tyler Kendall ◽  
Charlotte Vaughn ◽  
...  

Kalbotyra ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 74 ◽  
pp. 268-285
Author(s):  
Elena Vladimirska ◽  
Jelena Gridina ◽  
Daina Turlā-Pastare

In this paper, we discuss the question of discourse markers (DM) – a category conceived differently by theoretical and applied linguistic approaches. Unlike in applied approaches, in which DMs are considered desemantized/grammaticalized lexical units devoid of their own semantics and therefore of status in the language, we consider DMs to constitute a full-fledged category of language, having its own semantics and distribution, both of which play a crucial role in the construction of discourse (Paillard 2011, 2012; Franckel 2008, 2019). This hypothesis has been developed in theoretical linguistics and has seen little evidence from a perspective of the acquisition and didactics of foreign languages. Based on cross-analysis of linguistic theories (Benveniste 1974; Ducrot 1980; Hopper & Traugott 1993; Culioli 1990,1999; Franckel & Paillard 2008) and on distributional analysis of data of the spoken corpora, we show that the absence of specific linguistic status for DMs has repercussions at the didactic and acquisition levels: DMs are generally approached in an ad hoc manner, all functions combined, which leads on the one hand to gaps in the acquisition of French and, on the other hand, to the ambiguity of criteria for evaluation. Therefore, at the level of applied linguistics, we suggest the integration of DMs in the learning path as a full category, an integration that must be carried out on several axes – semantic, syntax and prosodic – and be based on an authentic oral corpora of the spoken language. At the theoretical level, we use transversal analysis in order to give yet another argument in favor of a semantical-enunciative approach to discursive markers.


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