A Study Of The Mechanism Of Discourse Markers’ Development

This paper discusses the mechanism of the development of discourse markers, aiming at proving that the Cooptation could do better than Grammaticalization on explaining how discourse markers develop.Chapter 1 includes a preliminary introduction about the history of study in discourse markers and a summary about the mechanisms of the development of discourse markers.Chapter 2 makes a comment on the effectiveness of three different approaches, including Lexicalization, Constructionalization and Grammaticalization, the last which specifically include Classic Grammaticalization, the Grammaticalization subordinating Pragmaticalization, the Grammaticalization emphasizing Subjectivization and the Grammaticalization about principles of language use.Chapter 3 points out five representative Chinese discourse markers on which scholars have agreement, including’ni shuo’iyou say),’wan/e’(over),’bie shuo’(don’t say), ijiu shf (just is), and’ran hou’(then/and). And it also introduces the method, corpus, and especially the theory of Cooptation and Theticals under the outline of Discourse Grammar. The Cooptation has three properties, namely the non-gradualness, high-repeatability and occur universality.Chapter 4 is case study. For each case, I firstly show its use in Sentence Grammar(SG) and Thetical Grammar(TG) in Mandarin, and secondly search out its first-time use in SG and TG from the historical documents, finally introduce and criticize some scholars’ study based on the theory of Grammaticalization. The summary part consists of explaining the addition of the Atypical-TG-Conjuncts and a chart about the time and document in which it occurs.Chapter 5 is the explaining and the conclusion. The earliest time of each discourse marker using in SG and TG has been processed by the same appropriate principles. The use in SG and TG nearly occur in a time of proximity, which can prove the non-gradualness of Cooptation. The properties of discourse markers, in sematic bleaching and phonological reduction are not compatible with Grammaticalization as it seems, and the high occurrence does compatible with Grammaticalization. The syntactic independence and non-restrictiveness in meaning, however, does absolutely contradict with the boundness and obligatoriness in Grammaticalization, but does compatible with the high-repeatability of Cooptation. The un-predictability of the original construct for discourse markers proves the occur universality of Cooptation.