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A Research on the Formation Process of the Discourse Marker “Zhemeshuo”

Gwon bu gyeong 1

1영남대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

In modern Chinese, “Zheme” and “Shuo” are often used together to form a phrase, but sometimes they can be used as one word. This paper uses the theory of lexicalization and grammaticalization to study the historical evolution process of “Zheme Shuo” from the diachronic perspective and reached the following conclusions. First, “Zhemeshuo” has been used as the conjunction and the Discourse Marker in the Qing dynasty. The conjunction “Zhemeshuo2” appeared in the response sentences of dialogues and played a role of correlation, but it still had lexical meaning. the discourse marker “Zhemeshuo3” appeared in monologues and functioned as the continuation in the text or was used to elicit concluding discourse. Second, the main motivation of the lexicalization of the conjunction “Zhemeshhuo2” was the context which expressed the conditional relation. During its formation process, the principle of language economy and the analogy mechanism also played an important role. Third, with the high frequency use, the conjunction “Zhemeshuo2” could be used in monologues and “Zhemeshuo” has gradually become a discourse marker. Since the Qing Dynasty, the discourse marker usages have appeared in large numbers and new functions have been created.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.