Title Exploring the functional profile of lithuanian “tipo” and its english counterparts in spoken discourse: a corpus-based study /
Translation of Title Lietuvių kalbos „tipo“ ir jo atitikmenų anglų kalboje funkcinis profilis: sakytinės kalbos tekstynu paremta analizė.
Authors Gilytė, Inesa
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Pages 90
Keywords [eng] tekstynų lingvistika, sakytinė kalba, diskurso žymikliai, intersubjektyvumas, aproksimatyvumas, corpus linguistics, spoken discourse, discourse markers, intersubjectivity, approximation
Abstract [eng] The main aim of this paper is to compare the use of the English approximative discourse markers “sort of”, “kind of”, “like” with the use of the Lithuanian discourse markers in spoken language. The study focuses on the functional profiles of these four selected units of analysis. This thesis aimed to identify the contextual nuances, pragmatic tendencies, and meanings of the use of approximative discourse markers in the two languages. The functional analysis is based on previous cross-linguistic insights and personal assessment. The objectives of the thesis were: to describe the theory of the use of discourse markers in spoken language, to describe the concept of approximation, to review the functions of approximative discourse markers that have been previously identified in different languages, to identify the main trends as well as to compare the functional profile of the approximative discourse markers under study. For the purposes of the study, 200 uses of each discourse marker were randomly selected from the British National Corpus and the spoken language sub-corpus of the Corpus of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language. The findings revealed that the main functions of the selected approximative discourse markers are filler, metalinguistic, and quotative use. There were significant differences noticed in usage between the two languages being compared: the Lithuanian “tipo” has a more affective than evidential meaning (cf. Aijmer 2002), i.e. the use of “tipo” is more subjective than its English counterparts. The functional profile of “tipo” is noticeably more expansive and has acquired pragmatic meanings; the marker is also often used to convey emotion and clarify thoughts by implying that the quoted material is not ascribed to one person. English approximative discourse markers derived from type nouns are seemingly more dualistic: they are mostly used to express either imprecision or doubt. The discourse marker “like” which expresses similarity, is more associated with exemplification, while its Lithuanian counterpart “tipo” does not show any such function. Overall, the results of the study suggest that each of the approximative discourse markers is uniquely multifunctional. The present research is one of the first of its kind to analyze the functional potential of the Lithuanian approximative discourse marker “tipo” in spoken discourse and to compare the use of its counterparts in other languages.
Dissertation Institution Vilniaus universitetas.
Type Master thesis
Language English
Publication date 2024