Mandarin Chinese buguo (‘but’) as a metacoherence marker in TV/radio interview talks

This study examines the uses of Mandarin Chinese buguo ‘but’ as a contrastive discourse marker (CM) in spoken discourse. The data were taken from casual conversations, TV/radio single-interviewee interviews and TV panel news interviews. We found that two main types of the CM buguo were used to mark contrast: restrictive buguo and cancellative buguo. Restrictive buguo is similar to the adv buguo in usage in that it modifies the validity of the preceding proposition to signal implicit contrast. Cancellative buguo is used to cancel the validity of a previous proposition to indicate explicit contrast. As such, restrictive buguo can serve as a topic-shift marker and to convey implicit disagreement; cancellative buguo often acts as a topic-change marker used to introduce explicit disagreement. In particular, both restrictive buguo and cancellative buguo can serve as metacoherence markers, which are often employed by interview hosts/hostesses to make the discourse optimally coherent.

Ontogeny of the Furongian (late Cambrian) remopleuridioid trilobiteHaniwa quadrataKobayashi, 1933 from Korea: implications for trilobite taxonomy

The monophyly of the trilobite Order Asaphida has been challenged. The Superfamily Remopleuridioidea was included in the Order Asaphida, based on the ventral median suture and highly bulbous protaspis of the late Furongian–Tremadocian representatives of the group. The remopleuridioid,Haniwa quadrataKobayashi, 1933 from the Furongian (late Cambrian) Hwajeol Formation of Korea, represents a primitive morphology of the Remopleuridioidea. This trilobite does not have a typical globular morphology of asaphoid protaspis, and the free cheeks remained yoked together during the whole of the development. This supports the previous proposition that the Superfamily Remopleuridioidea should be excluded from the Order Asaphida. In addition, the evolution of a highly globular protaspis of the Ordovician remopleuridioid trilobites from the less bulbous protaspis corroborates the possibility of multiple evolutions of a highly globular protaspis. It can be argued that the possession of a highly globular protaspis does not guarantee the membership of the Order Asaphida, and thus the concept of the Order Asaphida should be emended.