The Study On Discourse Marker "X+De Shi"

Language communication is the transmission of human thinking information and the externalization of communicator' meta-language. "X + de shi" as one of discourse markers plays an important role on the discourse and emotional expression. But the research on "X + de shi" is very weak, because most of researchers focused on words, phrases and some individual minor sentences of the discourse markers. Based on meta-language theory, relevance theory and other theories, we make a comprehensive and detailed research on discourse marker "X + de shi". The literature research, material statistics and synchronic diachronic investigation and other methods will be used. First of all, combined with the characteristics of the research object, we define the discourse marker "X + de shi" and analyze its internal structure, syntactic distribution and comparisons between marked tendencies and unmarked tendencies. Secondly, we mainly analyze the functions of "X + de shi" : textual organization function and interpersonal communication function with a overlapping between each function. Thirdly, we make a diachronic analysis of its development process which started from Six Dynasties to now and reanalysis its development process to get its delexicalization tendency. And then we further summarize its formation mechanism, explain the formation motivation from "Emergent Grammar" and replacement of foreground and background. Finally, we summarize the conclusions of this thesis and point out the lack of this study.In this study, we selected constructions of discourse markers as the research object and a variety of methods are used. Compared with the predecessors' research, this paper has certain innovations which helps us understand the whole picture of discourse marker "X + de shi" systematically and use "X + de shi" effectively. To some extent, the thesis enriches the case researches of discourse markers.