The Distribution, Semantics, and Metafunctions of Hao le in Chinese and its Equivalents in English

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

A discourse marker is not only a unique pragmatic mechanism in modern Chinese oral communication, but also an important means to promote the mutual understanding between speakers and listeners. It reflects the language user’s adaptation to the context, and helps the speaker to construct the text and finally realizes different pragmatic functions so as to facilitate communication. The current study aims to explore the distribution, semantics, and metafunctions of the discourse marker Hao le and its varied equivalents in English depending on different linguistic contexts in Chinese language. The results show that when Hao le is analyzed from the perspectives of the distribution, semantics and metafunctions, this plausibly simple discourse marker has multiple equivalents in English. Distributionally speaking, in a turn, Hao le can appear at the beginning, in the middle, at the end of a turn and even appear alone. Its equivalents in English can be seen as a response marker (well), connective marker (and) and inferential result marker (so?). Semantically speaking, it is found that Hao le is able to express semantic meanings denoted by sequence, concession, and dissuasion. Its appearance can serve as participation markers (you konw), result markers (so, therefore), response markers (well(passively accept)) and response markers (well(forbidden)). Metafunctionally speaking, Hao le can be used to establish a topic, continue a topic, switch a topic, and end a topic. It can be used as time markers (now), connective markers (ok(and)), topic-change markers (by the way), and response markers (well(forbidden)). Furthermore Hao le expresses interpersonal metafunctions of modality and mood. In this paper, it is hoped that the current study can help to strengthen and enrich the study of disyllablic discourse marker Hao le in modern Chinese and improve Chinese EFL learners' application of discourse markers and communicative ability in cross-cultural communication, and additionally provides a valuable practical reference for compiling Chinese textbooks and dictionaries.

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