An Interactional Linguistics Study Of Yinwei In Mandarin Chinese

Previous researches on Chinese yinwei mainly involve two phases: 1)yinwei,as a relation marker of causal complex sentences,expresses its truth-value semantics;2)yinwei,as a discourse marker,promotes the progression of interaction.There,however,are still some problems in current studies as follows: 1)existing researches about functions of yinwei are not systematical enough.Previous scholars merely find partial functions and there are few studies simultaneously focusing on yinwei as a conjunction introducing causal relative clause and as a discourse marker managing and adjusting the development of ongoing conversation;2)relevant explanations on the formation of functional diversity are not comprehensive and in-depth.There are few studies,based on the interaction and coordination of communicative factors such as conversational sequence positions,linguistic forms and occurring frequencies,exploring how functions of yinwei come into being.Based on the above discussion,this paper,integrating the interactional linguistics and the conversation analysis method,carries out a comprehensive and in-depth research on the discourse-interactional functions of yinwei through the analysis of talk-in-interaction,which is expected to move forward to reveal the interactive relationships among linguistic structures,pragmatic functions and talk-in-interaction so as to deepen our recognition on the grammatical features of Chinese spoken language.This paper presents special expression functions and pragmatic values of yinwei in oral conversation.Based on the present research,discourse functions of yinwei,in Chinese naturally occurring talk,are determined by various factors such as positions of turn and sequences,linguistic forms and occurring frequency.Yinwei as a conjunction is mainly used for elaborating and explaining previous discourses so as to mitigate or eliminate potential negative communicative factors and to strengthen or consolidate explicit positive interactive factors.In this sense,the conjunction can appear behind both accepted response and discretionary one.Thus,it can be seen that yinwei,apart from being applied to prevent or fill in gaps of interactive communication in a passive manner,can move forward to consolidate interpersonal relationships among conversational participants in an active way.And yinwei as a discourse marker,deriving from the grammaticalization of its conjunctive usage,realizes the decategorization from propositional meaning to non-propositional one.In the process of grammaticalization,yinwei,with its semantic meaning continuing declining,is endowed with certain pragmatic functions such as initiating the turn,continuing the turn and inserting the turn,which play essential roles in organizing and managing the discourse so as to promote successful development of interaction.We propose that yinwei,actually,serves as a kind of linguistic resource for constituting a turn-construction unit and conversational sequence in real talk-in-interaction and simultaneously as a manner of realizing social actions and other interactive functions.