The Counter-expectation Discourse Markers Reasearch

There is a type of discourse markers means “counter-expectation” in oral and written language, here we named it as “counter-expectation discourse markers”.There is no doubt that counter-expectation discourse markers are widely and frequently used in daily verbal communication. To this type of discourse markers,Chinese linguistics only has few case study, so we think that the system research is necessary. This paper includes five chapters.The first chapter mainly elaborates the purpose and the significance of the research, introduces the theoretical results and shortcomings of previous researches,and explains the theories, methods and the data sources of this paper.The second chapter selects the counter-expectation discourse markers which will be studied in this paper and divides them into three classes as “zhii(知)”, “lai(料)”, and “xíang(想)” based on the definition of the counter-expectation discourse markers and we certify the quality of research obeject. It also studies the discourse distribution and contextual characteristics of each subclass, and summarizes the discourse mode of the counter-expectation discourse markers on this basis.The third chapter analyzes the functions of the counter-expectation discourse markers mainly from three aspects of the functions: discourse organization,interpersonal interaction and context adaptability. Discourse organization function mainly includes form coherence function and content coherence function.Interpersonal interaction function mainly includes marking counter-expectation,marking evaluation and feeling and marking obvious answer. Context adaptability function mainly includes confirmation context, explanation context and result context.The fourth chapter is divided into two parts. The first part mainly studies the diachronic semantic change of each subclass of the counter-expectation discourse markers from the perspective of grammaticalization. The second part mainly makes reasonable explanations to the counter-expectation discourse markers formation mechanism.The fifth chapter summarizes the conclusion of this paper and points out the innovation and the problems to be further studied.