M.A. Theses in Linguistics at the University of North Dakota (Abstracts)
Adams, Chris 2012
Six discourse markers in Tunisian Arabic: A syntactic and pragmatic analysis
The following study is a description and analysis of six discourse markers in
Tunisian Arabic. In it I will attempt to determine the syntactic and pragmatic roles
of
each marker, describing its function in discourse. The final analysis will be based
on
the pragmatic model of relevance theory.
I have based my study on thirty-two (32) texts in Tunisian Arabic, looking at
frequently-occurring discourse markers in these texts and analyzing them based on
their discourse roles in terms of local cohesion and pragmatic inference.
The conclusions of this study focus on the conceptual and procedural content of
each discourse marker. I have attempted to identify the syntactic and pragmatic role
of
all six markers, looking at their argumentative functions in discourse. The result
is a
unified pragmatic function for each discourse marker.
Download thesis from http://arts-sciences.und.edu/summer-institute-of-linguistics/theses/_files/docs/2012-adams-chris.pdf