The current paper reports on a study investigating the prosodic features of the Chinese discourse marker haole. The data were collected from 14 native Chinese speakers who participated in two recording sessions designed by the authors. The results indicate that haole as a discourse marker occurring at different syntactic positions is prosodically distinct. Specifically, in some cases, haole at the left periphery (LP) is prosodically independent of its following utterance, while haole at the right periphery (RP) is always prosodically attached to its preceding utterance. In addition, haole at LP is higher, larger, and longer than haole at RP, respectively, concerning pitch, intensity, and duration. The study suggests that these differences are closely related to the pragmatic functions of haole as a discourse marker in oral interaction. The findings above may shed light on the incorporation of prosody into the pragmatic analysis of discourse markers and conversation management in general.

The present paper aims to explore the performance of Sympathize as a speech act by advanced learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). We collected data from both 16 advanced CFL learners and 16 native speakers of Chinese through a DCT, and we then asked 10 native speakers of Chinese to rate the appropriacy of the DCTs provided by the two groups. The results of our analysis show that the language use of native speakers and advanced learners only differed significantly when they employed three strategies “Minimize the negativity of the events,” “Analyze the negative events objectively,” and “Look at problems from a positive perspective,” while their behavior only marginally differed when it came to the two strategies of “Release the listeners’ negative emotions” and “Encourage.” However, learners received overall lower scores than native speakers regarding the appropriateness of their sympathizing expressions.