A Study On The Discourse Marker Of "Wo Bao Zheng(我保证)" In Modern Chinese

Since the study of discourse markers has been introduced into the Chinese academic community,it has become the research focus of oral communication,and various discourse studies are conducted.In particular,the research on"Wo V"is constantly deepening,whether it is the construction"Wo/Ni V(我/你V)"or cases like"Wo Zhidao(我知道)","Wo Xiang(我想)".Based on previous researches,this paper collects a large amount of linguistic data,selects the subject-predicate structure"Wo Baozheng(我保证)"as the research object,and discusses the process,characteristics and motivation of how they involve into discourse markers.By using CCL database,BCC database and Weibo and applying various grammar and pragmatic theories,this paper comprehensively and carefully analyzes the structure"Wo Baozheng(我保证)".This paper discusses the research from five major aspects.Through analysis,it summarizes the development track of the discourse marker"Wo Baozheng(我保证)"as its original meaning becomes blurred and develops into a"subjective definition".This"subjective definition"implies the speaker’s emotion.Finally,this cognitive meaning evolves into a discourse marker,and the degree of marking is from low to high.On this basis,the three major pragmatic functions of the discourse marker"I promise"are summarized:organizing discourse(marks of continuing a conversation and marks of maintaining the continuity of the conversation),emphasizing(signs of stronger tone and emphasis on unfinished words),and showing subjective attitude(affirmative attitude,biased towards the speaker’s perspective).This paper also focuses on the formation mechanism of the discourse marker"Wo Bao zheng(我保证)",by analyzing from four different perspectives:decategorization,grammaticalization,subjectivization and pragmatic inference.The formation of the discourse marker"Wo Bao zheng(我保证)"is actually a process of decategorization.With the reanalysis of the structure and the analogy of the existing language expression structure,it gradually evolves into a discourse marker.At the same time,under the effect of subjectivization and pragmatic reasoning,the discourse marker"Wo Bao zheng(我保证)"produces a higher frequency of use.