Distribution And Functions Of Contrastive Discourse Markers In Paragraph-initial Sentences Of Linguistic Papers

Contrastive Discourse Markers (herein DMs) refer to lexical expressions that signal contrastive relations between linguistic segments in a written discourse. The units of analysis for the thesis are the occurrences of selected putative contrastive DMs co-occurring in the paragraph-initial sentences (herein PIS) of linguistic papers. The departure point of the current research is to identify and characterize the physical positions of occurrences in question into the PIS-initials, -medials, and -finals, and then populate their frequencies in the context. After that, their functions are reclassified by hand into idea structures and interpersonal functions; intra-PIS contrast displayers and paragraphic contrast displayers.The distributional features of occurrences in question are theoretically based on the observations and other researches. When an occurrence introduces a PIS, it is categorized into the PIS-initial group; when an occurrence ends a PIS, the PIS-final group; otherwise the PIS-medial group.The functional theoretical orientations in the thesis are mainly directed to two aspects: Schiffrin's (1987) functional model and positions of contrast counterparts which are based on Fraser's contrast or denial displayer model (1998, 1996c) of contrastive DMs. Both are conducted independently. Among them, Fraser's the "following" segment linked by a contrastive DM is termed as a contrast body, the "preceding" segment conjoined as a contrast counterpart saying the source of contrast. Hence the contrast relationship between the "following" segment and the "preceding" is converted into a parallel relationship between the contrast body and the counterpart.The current research is of empirical in nature. The method of corpus techniques is adopted, with the qualitative method and the quantitative method. In light of statistical results, the findings of the thesis are summarized as follows:i.Positional distribution of contrastive DMs in the PISs in our data:1.Contrastive DMs are not evenly distributed in the PISs, with the PIS-medials more than the PIS-initials, and more than the PIS-finals.