The role of discourse strategies in the grammaticalization of the Japanese discourse markerdakara

Abstract

The present study examines the diachronic development of the Japanese discourse marker dakara ‘so’ from the perspective of grammaticalization with a special focus on the role of discursive strategy in its semantic-pragmatic meaning change. Stemming from the adverbial phrase soredakara ‘because it is so’, dakara originally emerged as a causal connective that introduces a consequence. Subsequently, it gained several non-causal uses, i.e. the point-making use that refers back to what has been said or inferable in the discourse to stress the point that the speaker has been trying to make, the point-clarification use that points out that the preceding interlocutor’s statements need more elaboration, and the point-denying use that indicates the speaker’s opposition to the interlocutor’s claim. Among the new non-causal uses, it is found that the point-making use emerged from the retrospective use of causality as a result of employing the discourse strategy of justification in argumentative discourse, while the point-clarification and the point-denying uses arose due to its use as a device for delaying disagreement. It is argued that these new uses developed because the expression was repeatedly used for these two discourse strategies and over time the readings associated with these contexts became conventionalized and turned into the expression’s encoded meaning. This low-level generalization seems to better explain the process of grammaticalization than the high-level generalization of (inter)subjectivity for the developments of dakara.

Investigating the Interaction Between Prosody and Pragmatics Quantitatively: A Case Study of the Chinese Discourse Marker ni zhidao (“You Know”)

“…These researches neither made a statistical analysis nor constructed a model by integrating position, pragmatics, and prosody. In the same vein, among studies of discourse markers in other languages, some (e.g., Blakemore, 1987 ; Fraser, 1987 ; Schiffrin, 1987 ; Tanno, 2018 ; Rhee, 2020 ) examined the pragmatic functions of specific discourse markers relying on context and syntax, and some mainly focused on the multifunctionality of discourse markers (e.g., Schiffrin, 1987 ; Brinton, 1996 ; Jucker and Ziv, 1998 ; Lenk, 1998 ; Erman, 2001 ; Aijmer, 2002 ) and/or their syntactic positions (e.g., Fraser, 1990 ; Redeker, 1991 ; Hansen, 1997 ; Schourup, 1999 ; Schiffrin, 2001 ; Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004 ), without mapping pragmatic functions onto syntactic positions statistically. In this research state, a statistical analysis of the utterance distributions and pragmatic roles of ni zhidao and the mapping of the former onto the latter in particular can provide new insights into the intuitively-inferred correlation between the position and pragmatics of discourse markers that “different positions are responsible for subtle changes in meaning or function” ( Hansen, 1997 : 156).…”

“…Research on discourse markers generally presents five representative perspectives: (1) Coherence model (e.g., Schiffrin, 1987 , 1994 , 2003 ; Chen, 2002 ; He and Mo, 2002 ) explores the role of discourse markers in displaying the semantic coherence between discourse segments and the discourse coherence mode; (2) Relevance model (e.g., Blakemore, 1987 , 2002 , 2011 ; Ran, 2002 ; Shan, 2014a ; Li et al, 2018 ) focuses on relevant inference, studying how speakers use discourse markers to guide or restrict listeners to find relevance between discourse segments; (3) Syntactic-pragmatic model (e.g., Fraser, 1987 , 1999 , 2009 , 2015 ; Akar and Öztürk, 2020 ) examines the syntactic features and pragmatic functions of discourse markers, arguing that the function of discourse markers is to guide the listener to correctly interpret the logical relationship between the preceding and following discourse segments; (4) Grammaticalization/pragmaticalization model (e.g., Fang, 2005 ; Wu, 2005 ; Maschler, 2009 ; Dong, 2010 ; Li, 2014 ; Fedriani and Sanso, 2017 ; Tanno, 2018 ; Rhee, 2020 ) probes into the evolution of discourse markers and the contributing factors behind this; (5) Prosody-pragmatics model (e.g., Hirschberg, 2002 ; Matzen, 2004 ; Braga and Marques, 2004 ; Wichmann et al, 2010 ; Beňuš, 2012 ; Abuczki, 2014 ; Cabarrão et al, 2015 ; Gonen et al, 2015 ; Volín et al, 2016 ) draws on prosody as an objective factor to identify and characterize discourse markers or as an immediate and readily accessible feature to reveal the functions of discourse markers and how people comprehend them. Some of these studies have shifted from the traditional syntactic-semantic perspective to the pragmatic-cognitive or even prosodic dimension.…”

“…They both indicate the purpose of the speaker’s discourse accurately and guide the listener to understand it, thus effectively realizing the communicative intent. Related studies (e.g., Blakemore, 1987 ; Fraser, 1987 ; Schiffrin, 1987 ; Chen, 2002 ; He and Mo, 2002 ; Ran, 2002 ; Fang, 2005 ; Wu, 2005 ; Tanno, 2018 ; Rhee, 2020 ) have analyzed the syntactic distribution, communicative process, causes of formation, and development process of discourse markers. These researches reveal their syntactic features, discourse functions, grammaticalization, and pragmaticalization, thus deepening the academic understanding of this pragmatic phenomenon.…”

“…The pragmatic functions of discourse markers have traditionally been the focus of scholarly attention. To date, researchers (e.g., Blakemore, 1987 ; Fraser, 1987 ; Schiffrin, 1987 ; Chen, 2002 ; He and Mo, 2002 ; Ran, 2002 ; Fang, 2005 ; Wu, 2005 ; Tanno, 2018 ; Rhee, 2020 ) have primarily relied on context and syntax to examine the multiple pragmatic functions of specific discourse markers in different contexts, or to analyze how discourse markers perform certain discourse functions in specific contexts within some theoretical frameworks. These investigations need to be further developed and refined for four reasons: (1) over-relying on abstract communicative contexts for subjective reasoning; (2) lacking sufficient linguistic evidence due to investigation into only a small number of examples; (3) failing to statistically investigate the interaction between “tangible” prosody and “intangible” function of discourse markers; (4) mainly using elicited conversations as data and paying little or even no attention to spontaneous speech.…”

A Domain-Function Analysis of ni zhidao (你知道, “You Know”) in Chinese Simultaneous Speech

“…As reviewed in Shan (2021), DM studies have been conducted from five representative perspectives: (1) The coherence perspective (e.g., Schiffrin (1987a), Schiffrin (1994), Schiffrin (2003)) focuses on the part played by DMs in marking the semantic coherence holding discourse segments and discourse coherence modes; (2) the relevance perspective (e.g., Blakemore, 1987Blakemore, , 2002Blakemore, , 2011Shan, 2014a) targets relevant inference to investigate the use of DMs to guide or restrict addressees to identify relevance holding between discourse segments; (3) the syntactic-pragmatic perspective (e.g., Akar & O ¨zt€ urk, 2020;Fraser, 1987Fraser, , 2015 explores the syntactic features and pragmatic functions of DMs, and proposes that DMs function to guide addressees to interpret the logical relationships holding between embedding discourse segments; (4) the grammaticalization or pragmaticalization perspective (e.g., Fedriani & Sanso, 2017;Maschler, 2009;Rhee, 2020;Tanno, 2022) deals with the evolution of DMs and the underlying factors; (5) the prosodypragmatics perspective (e.g., Abuczki, 2014;Benuso˜, 2012;Gonen et al, 2015;Volin et al, 2017;Wichmann et al, 2010) takes prosody as an objective identifier of DMs or as a readily accessible characteristic to reveal the functions of DMs and how people understand them. Studies from these perspectives have examined various aspects of DMs, but they do not provide formal, systematic DM annotation models for reference.…”