TY - JOUR
T1 - Discourse and grammaticalization of contrastive markers in Taiwanese Southern Min
T2 - A corpus-based study
AU - Chang, Miao Hsia
N1 - Funding Information:
This research project has been funded by the National Science Council, Taiwan, ROC, under grant numbers NSC 90-2411-H-163-001 and NSC 91-2411-H-003-045. Part of the results of this paper was presented at The Symposium on Selected NSC Projects in General Linguistics from 1998 to 2000. I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions on the manuscript. I also thank Dr. Shuanfan Huang, Dr. Huei-ling Lai and Dr. Jung-sung Yiao for their valuable comments. Besides, my gratitude goes to the NTNU Academic Paper Editing Clinic. All remaining mistakes, however, are strictly mine. In addition, I owe a great deal to the late Harry Yu, who availed me of a concordancer specially programmed to run my Taiwanese corpus. Last, I would like to dedicate this paper to my late mother—the first and major contributor to my TSM corpus.
PY - 2008/12
Y1 - 2008/12
N2 - This paper aims to explore the semantic-pragmatic functions and syntactic patterning of contrastive markers (CM) in Taiwanese Southern Min (TSM). Mkoh, tansi, putko and sikong are classified as conjunctive CMs, and kisit, koh/iaukoh, tianto and iausi as non-conjunctive CMs. It is found that recurrent patterns of CMs in discourse have yielded reinterpretations that are sensitive to the sequentiality, communicative intent and the dynamics of interaction. Generally speaking, the closer a CM is to the clause matrix, the more it is used for propositional contrast, while the more peripheral a CM is, the more likely it is to take on a metalinguistic interpretation. Sikong is a newly evolved epistemic marker that signals mild contrast and the speaker's puzzlement. Kisit is addressee-oriented and corrects an assumption made by the addressee. Tianto is message-oriented and asserts a proposition with a tone of certainty. Koh and iaukoh, in addition to their referential reading, signify the speaker's strong emotional state and are frequently used for underscoring a dissociating speech act. Iaukoh, in particular, denotes an addressee-oriented contrast to achieve an argumentative, reproaching or contentious effect. Iausi is a verb complex used to foreground an ensuing predicative statement and suggests a tone of compliance and concession.
AB - This paper aims to explore the semantic-pragmatic functions and syntactic patterning of contrastive markers (CM) in Taiwanese Southern Min (TSM). Mkoh, tansi, putko and sikong are classified as conjunctive CMs, and kisit, koh/iaukoh, tianto and iausi as non-conjunctive CMs. It is found that recurrent patterns of CMs in discourse have yielded reinterpretations that are sensitive to the sequentiality, communicative intent and the dynamics of interaction. Generally speaking, the closer a CM is to the clause matrix, the more it is used for propositional contrast, while the more peripheral a CM is, the more likely it is to take on a metalinguistic interpretation. Sikong is a newly evolved epistemic marker that signals mild contrast and the speaker's puzzlement. Kisit is addressee-oriented and corrects an assumption made by the addressee. Tianto is message-oriented and asserts a proposition with a tone of certainty. Koh and iaukoh, in addition to their referential reading, signify the speaker's strong emotional state and are frequently used for underscoring a dissociating speech act. Iaukoh, in particular, denotes an addressee-oriented contrast to achieve an argumentative, reproaching or contentious effect. Iausi is a verb complex used to foreground an ensuing predicative statement and suggests a tone of compliance and concession.
KW - Contrastive markers
KW - Counter-expectation
KW - Grammaticalization
KW - Pragmatically motivated interpretation
KW - Taiwanese Southern Min
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U2 - 10.1016/j.pragma.2008.04.009
DO - 10.1016/j.pragma.2008.04.009
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:52949127974
SN - 0378-2166
VL - 40
SP - 2114
EP - 2149
JO - Journal of Pragmatics
JF - Journal of Pragmatics
IS - 12
ER -