Discourse Markers -- Rint Sybesma, Wolfgang Behr, Yueguo Gu, Zev Handel & C.-T. James Huang
(eds.). (forthcoming). Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics. Leiden: Brill.
Discourse markers
1. Introduction
Discourse markers (DMs henceforth) have been a popular topic in discourse and pragmatics
research over the last couple of decades. A recent query of Linguistics and Language Behavior
Abstracts (February 9, 2013) database shows that DMs have been studied in Spanish, English,
French, Chinese, Japanese and many other languages. The majority of DM research has been on
spoken discourse, as spoken interaction is commonly understood as a dynamic process of speaker
and listener constructing an intersubjective world of discourse. Along the flow of discourse, DMs
function as ‘traffic lights’ or ‘landmarks’, as it were, and they are used to create discourse
coherence and to achieve situated interpretations of utterances.
2. Chinese DMs and their structural and functional properties
The understanding of DMs is both easy and difficult. It is easy in the sense that they are so
frequent in real-life discourse; however, it is difficult when we attempt to technically define them.
As a matter of fact, no definition of DMs so far has been commonly acknowledged in the field.
This article does not intend to propose an all-satisfying definition either. Here DMs are described
as lexical items, be they words or short phrases, which help connect prior and following discourse
segments. Most likely, DMs do not have a prominent grammatical status or semantic content in
their local linguistic contexts. For instance, in the following discourse segment:
好，我们言归正传
Hǎo
wǒmén
yán
gūi
zhèngzhuàn
OK
we
words
back to
real stuff
‘OK,
let’s
get
back to
our business.’
In its normal reading, an apparently audible pause follows hǎo 好. The pause isolates hǎo 好 as
a grammatically independent element in its linguistic context. Semantically, the hǎo 好 in the
example does not carry any meaning of ‘goodness’ or any other specific lexical meaning. In other
words, the hǎo 好 does not add or deduct much semantic content to or from the discourse
segment. The hǎo 好 makes itself a good candidate of a DM in Chinese discourse given the
following criteria. This example helps us tabulate the following properties of a DM in Chinese.
Table 1. Linguistic properties of DMs in Chinese
1．DMs are unstressed compared with other
adjacent words and/or structures;
2．With perceptible pauses before and/or after DMs;
3．Very often DMs form prosodic units by
Prosody
themselves;
4．The majority of Chinese DMs are monosyllabic or
disyllabic. Tri-syllables and four-syllabic ones are
also possible but much less likely.
Semantics
DMs lack or do not have propositional meaning.
1．DMs cannot be readily pigeonholed into any given
grammatical category;
2．DMs are syntactically optional. They are not
optional in the case when they are used as
independent conversational turn;
Constituency
3．DMs have flexible positions. DMs can take initial,
middle and final positions in a discourse
segment, the initial position being the most
frequent;
4．Many Chinese DMs can take sentence-final
particles (e.g.: a 啊, ba 吧, ne 呢, ya 呀 etc.).
1. DMs can suggest the start, continuation, shift and
termination of a turn or prosodic unit;
Discourse-pra
gmatic
functions
2．DMs express and hint attitude of the speakers;
3．DMs enable interaction between the
interlocutors; and
4．DMs highlight topic and give clue to the
information focus in discourse.
In light of the properties discussed above, about twenty frequent Chinese DMs were identified
out of a mini-corpus of real-life spoken Chinese discourse of approximately 140,000 characters
(see Xǔ Jiājīn 许家金 2009).
Table 2. Frequent DMs in Chinese (sorted by frequency)
DM
Freq. (in descending order)
En 嗯
1,390
A 啊
598
O 哦
538
Nà(ge) 那（个）
531
Dùi- 对-
228
Ránhòu 然后
223
Hǎo 好-
201
Jìu 就-
169
Shì 是-
129
Ai 哎
105
Zhè 这-
48
Ao 噢
44
E 呃
38
Xíng 行-
29
OK
17
Nàme 那么
9
Zěnme 怎么样
7
Wǒshìshūo 我是说
7
The 18 DMs in Table 2 can be functionally categorized into four groups, characteristically
represented by backchanneling en 嗯, agreeing response hǎo 好, demonstrative nà(ge) 那(个)
and connective ránhòu 然后 respectively. This list is certainly not exhaustive if more Chinese
texts were collected and analyzed. Other DMs discussed in the literature include jìushì 就是, jì
ushìshūo 就是说, wǒxiǎng 我想, wǒshūo 我说, wǒrènwéi 我认为, wánle(yǐhòu/zhīhòu) 完
了(以后/之后), zhèbu 这不, nǐkànnǐ 你看你, duìbúduì 对不对, shàngqǐe 尚且, hékuàng 何
况 and so forth. They can be roughly classified into the four functional categories. The four
groups of DMs form the DM continuum from the most colloquial and interactive to the most
substantive lexical items of the DM family. The typical DMs are well-represented by the
monosyllabic and disyllabic colloquial ones. They are versatile in pragmatic functions, highly
flexible in terms of position and more frequent in actual language use. The controversy over DM
definitions and research is largely due to the diversified candidates of DMs. Or, rather, some DMs
are on the way of grammaticalization, which means that they are half grammatical terms, and
half DMs. Whether they are DMs is mainly defined by their context of use.
3. Approaches to Chinese discourse marker studies
The study on Chinese DMs has been generally understood as being fairly recent, however, the
interest in discourse-pragmatic features of some xūzì 虚字 or xūcí 虚词 (function words) has
a history as long as there was grammatical study on Chinese language. For example, Chao (1968)
has special sections on particles, interjections, as well as the non-canonical usage of
demonstratives, some adverbs and conjunctions in spoken Chinese. Lǚ Shūxīang 吕叔湘 (1980,
1985) and Zhāng Bójiāng 张伯江 and Fāng Méi 方梅 (1996) succinctly observed that there are
frequent non-deictic uses of demonstratives in Chinese. Unsurprisingly, discourse-pragmatic
interpretations of lexical items in Chinese are quite frequent, those lexical items or usages are
not termed as DMs, though. Special attention and systematic study on Chinese DMs are
motivated by discourse studies and its related fields such as interactional sociolinguistics,
pragmatics, and functional linguistics at large in the West. Studies on Chinese DMs can be
arguably summarized as two main strands: the first strand being the discourse analysts at foreign
language departments as well as those overseas Chinese scholars (Rán Yǒngpíng 冉永平, Féng
Guāngwǔ 冯光武, Sūn Hào 孙浩 et al.), and the other strand being the functional linguists at
departments of Chinese linguistics (Fāng Méi 方梅, Gāo Zēngxiá 高增霞). The first group of
scholars interpret the Chinese DM usage against the popular analytical frameworks in English
literature, for example the Relevance Theory once was a popular framework in dealing with
Chinese DMs. Schriffin and Fraser are the most frequent scholars they prefer to make reference
to. The second group of scholars in Chinese departments see DMs as the product of
pragmaticization and/or grammaticalization. Semantic bleaching and inter-subjectivity are
popular issues in which the second group of scholars are interested. The binary institutionalized
distinction of approaches to Chinese DMs can be seen as discourse-pragmatic approach and the
functional linguistic approach.
References
Chao, Yuen Ren, A Grammar of Spoken Chinese, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968.
Lǚ Shūxīang 吕叔湘, eds., Xiàndài hànyǔ bābǎi cí 现代汉语八百词 [800 Words in Modern
Chinese], Běijīng 北京: Shāngwù Yìnshūguǎn 商务印书馆, 1980.
Lǚ Shūxīang 吕叔湘 Jìndài hànyǔ zhǐdài cí 近代汉语指代词 [Referential Terms in Modern
Chinese], Shànghǎi 上海: Xuélín Chūbǎnshè 学林出版社, 1985.
Xǔ Jiājīn 许家金 Qīngshàonián hànyǔ kǒuyǔ zhōng huàyǔ biāojì de huàyǔ gōngnéng Yánjī
u 青少年汉语口语中的话语标记的话语功能研究 [The Use of Discourse Markers in Spoken
Chinese of Urban Teenagers], Běijīng 北京: Wàiyǔ Jiàoxué yú Yánjīu Chūbǎnshè 外语教学与
研究出版社, 2009.
Zhāng Bójiāng 张伯江 and Fāng Méi 方梅 Hànyǔ gōngnéng yǔfǎ Yánjīu 汉语功能语法研究
[Chinese Functional Grammar Research], Nánchāng 南昌: Jiāngxī Jiàoyù Chūbǎnshè 江西教育
出版社, 1996.
Author: Jiajin Xu
‘Teaser’ summary:
Discourse markers function as ‘traffic lights’ or ‘landmarks’, as it were, along the flow of discourse,
and they are used to create discourse coherence and to achieve situated interpretations of
utterances.
Autobiography
Xu, Jiajin, is associate professor of discourse studies and corpus linguistics at the National
Research Center for Foreign Language Education, Beijing Foreign Studies University, China. He has
published extensively on (corpus-based) discourse issues in both English and Chinese. Some of his
publications include: Investigating the APPRAISAL system in spoken English narratives by Chinese
EFL learners (2013), Comparing English varieties with Crown and CLOB (The 2009 Brown family
corpora) (2013), The Use of Discourse Markers in Spoken Chinese of Urban Teenagers (2009), and
Bang-le yi ge da mang (offered a big helping hand): A corpus study of the splittable compounds in
spoken and written Chinese (2010).
Terms for indexation
Discourse, pragmatics, discourse markers, pragmatic markers, spoken Chinese, discourse particles,
discourse connectives, disjunct, function words