Functional Hybridization In Discourse: Turning Imperatives into Discourse Markers
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18485/philologia.2023.21.21.2Keywords:
discourse markers, pragmatics, prosody, imperatives, intonation contoursAbstract
The author addresses discourse markers (DMs), suggesting that DMs represent functional, but not categorical, units. The paper shows that in reading aloud, under specific discourse conditions the readers convert imperatives into interjection-like units similar to DMs. This conversion is carried out through processing and adjusting prosodic features of imperative utterances, according to the function they perform in discourse, and can be defined as “functional hybridization”. The findings of the present paper support previous research in that: 1) according to our findings, prosodic structure of “functionally hybridized” imperatives places them close to interjections, and their function in discourse changes to attract attention to new information, or express “emphasis”; 2) “functionally hybridized” imperatives, like DMs, are characterized by specific formal features: initial position appears prerequisite for their autonomy, in other than initial position “functionally hybridized” imperatives tend to act as an enclitic to the previous word. Factors facilitating “functional hybridization” of imperatives are: 1) the formulaic/iconic structure of the imperative, 2) initial position, 3) emphatic nature of the utterance.
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