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Pragmatic Markers, Discourse Markers and Modal Particles: New perspectives
Edited by Chiara Fedriani and Andrea Sansó
[Studies in Language Companion Series 186] 2017
► pp. 71–98

Chapter 2
Towards a model for discourse marker annotation

From potential to feature-based discourse markers

| University of Cologne | Université catholique de Louvain
| Université catholique de Louvain
| Université catholique de Louvain
| Université catholique de Louvain

This chapter presents an empirical method for the identification and annotation of discourse markers (DMs) in in spontaneous spoken French (MDMA project). Central to the proposal is the assumption that DMs may be described as clusters of features that, in specific patterns of combination, allow to distinguish DM use from other linguistic items fulfilling a non-propositional function, such as modal particles or pragmatic markers. The hypothesis underlying the annotation experiment is that the analysis of the distributional constraints imposed on specific markers should uncover reliable features for the identification and categorization of DMs. Multivariate statistics suggest a certain hierarchy between the different features under scrutiny, regarding their relevance and reliability, in the process of identifying DMs in context.

Keywords: discourse marker, spoken French, corpus, multifactorial analysis
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • 1.Discourse markers and their rivals
  • 2.Data and method
    • 2.1Corpora
    • 2.2Annotation experiment
  • 3.From identification to annotation
    • 3.1Identification of “potential” discourse markers
    • 3.2Automatic retrieval from the corpus
    • 3.3Feature-based annotation in context
  • 4.Operationalization of linguistic features
    • 4.1Syntactic features
    • 4.2Semantic-pragmatic features
    • 4.3Cotextual features
    • 4.4Degree of certainty
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Frequency-based prototypes
    • 5.2Profiling discourse markers through multifactorial analysis
    • 5.3Weighing variables through conditional trees
    • 5.4Procedurality and “pragmatic markers”
    • 5.5Statistical validity of the model
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 13 November 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.186.03bol
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