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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. 417–437

Chapter 15
Italian discourse markers and modal particles in contact

| University of Bologna

The paper addresses the issue of the fuzzy boundaries between modal particles (henceforth MPs) and discourse markers (DMs) in a specific language contact situation, namely the Ladin area in Trentino-South Tyrol (Italy). It is still debated whether MPs should be seen as a subtype of DMs or whether they both should be seen as belonging to the more encompassing class of pragmatic markers (cf. Degand, Cornille & Pietrandrea 2013). The aim of this research is to investigate the uncertain and undefined boundaries of these categories in bilingual speech, in order to find out whether bilingual speakers treat DMs and MPs as separated linguistic categories or as a unified one.

Keywords: discourse markers, language contact, bilingual speech, Dolomitic Ladin
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Italian discourse markers and modal particles
    • 1.2Discourse markers and modal particles in contact
  • 2.Corpus
  • 3.Analysis
    • 3.1Interactional function
    • 3.2Metatextual function
    • 3.3Cognitive function
    • 3.4Val Gardena and Val Badia data
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 13 November 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.186.16fio
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