35.1889, Review: The Rise of Discourse Markers: Heine, Kaltenböck, Kuteva and Long (2023)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-35-1889. Fri Jun 28 2024. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 35.1889, Review: The Rise of Discourse Markers: Heine, Kaltenböck, Kuteva and Long (2023)

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Date: 28-Jun-2024
From: Giuseppina di Bartolo [g.dibartolo at uni-koeln.de]
Subject: Semantics: Heine, Kaltenböck, Kuteva and Long (2023)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/35.32

AUTHOR: Bernd Heine
AUTHOR: Gunther Kaltenböck
AUTHOR: Tania Kuteva
AUTHOR: Haiping Long
TITLE: The Rise of Discourse Markers
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2023

REVIEWER: Giuseppina di Bartolo

SUMMARY

Discourse markers (DMs) are a central phenomenon of language use and
have been the subject of a wide range of studies over the last three
decades. “The emergence of Discourse Markers” by B. Heine, G.
Kaltenböck, T. Kuteva and H. Long, published by Cambridge University
Press (2022), deals with discourse markers (DMs) from a diachronic
perspective. As stated at the beginning of the introduction (p. 2),
the authors are particularly concerned with the emergence of DMs and
their historical development. The book is divided into 9 chapters,
including both a theoretical discussion of issues and frameworks
relevant to diachronic studies of DMs (Chapters 1–2 and 8–9) and a
discussion of case studies from different languages (Chapters 3–6) as
well as from contexts of language contact (Chapter 7). In addition to
a list of tables and abbreviations at the beginning of the book, a set
of indices, including language, author, and subject indices, is
provided at the end.

Chapter 1 introduces the topic of the study, its focus and aims. It
provides a comprehensive discussion of previous research on the
emergence of DMs and discusses their different definitions. The
authors provide a list of grammatical properties that characterize DMs
(pp. 4–5, 10–11, 54) and propose a new definition (p. 7). This
definition is tested at the end of the chapter with respect to the
different features that DMs show in their development, i.e. (i)  a
meaning outside the sentence; (ii) a metatextual function; (iii) a
syntactically unattached status; (iv) a prosodically unintegrated or
less integrated status. The introduction also briefly addresses the
question of whether DMs belong to grammar.

Chapter 2 first clarifies the frameworks and principles that the
authors adopted in their study. These lie within the field of
functional and usage-based linguistics and include a diachronic and
typological perspective. Moreover, the study relies on the framework
of discourse grammar (Heine et al. 2013), and the role of theticals
within grammar is also considered (Kaltenböck et al. 2011). The
chapter provides an overview of two concepts that are relevant for the
analysis of the development of DMs, namely ‘grammaticalization’ and
‘cooptation’. By considering definitions and principles of
grammaticalization, the authors discuss how and to what extent DMs
should be considered part of a process of grammaticalization. In
addition, they define the concept of ‘cooptation’, i.e. a
cognitive-communicative operation whereby a text segment  is
transferred from the sentence grammar domain to the discourse grammar
domain (p. 26), and emphasize the role of this process in the
emergence of DMs. Finally, the chapter provides a contrastive
discussion of these two concepts, pointing out that the aim of the
study is to test the cooptation hypothesis in the diachronic
development of DMs.

Chapters 3 to 6 illustrate several case studies from different
languages, both Indo-European and non-Indo-European, adopting a
diachronic perspective based on language-internal description. The
cases are considered diachronically on the basis of both historical
and contemporary data. The authors make observations on the
development of DMs over a time span ranging from at least two
centuries, as in the case of French, to at most a millennium, as in
the case of Japanese. Chapter 3 offers an analysis of DMs from English
(i.e., ‘after all’, ‘anyway’, ‘I mean’, ‘if you like’, ‘if you will’,
‘instead’, ‘like’, ‘no doubt’, ‘right’, ‘so to say/so to speak’,
‘well’, and ‘what else’). Chapter 4 deals with French DMs (i.e., ‘à la
rigueur’, ‘à propos / à ce propos’, ‘alors’, ‘en fait / au fait’, and
‘enfin’). Chapter 5 addresses DMs from Japanese (i.e., ‘dakedo’,
‘demo’, ‘douride’, ‘ga’, ‘jijitsu’, ‘na’, ‘sate’, and ‘wake’). Chapter
6 analyzes Korean DMs (i.e., ‘icey’, ‘makilay’, ‘maliya’, and ‘tul’).
All four chapters follow the same structure, providing a discussion of
each DM. They include examples either from corpora (e.g., COCA for
English) or from secondary literature (e.g., Traugott 2018 for
English). They also include a discussion of the functions that each of
these linguistic realizations indicate after the development into a
DM. They highlight the effects and role of cooptation in the emergence
of each DM and the shift of functions from sentence grammar to
discourse grammar, trying to reconstruct the beginning of this shift.
At the end of each chapter, a table summarizes the hypothesized date
of cooptation regarding the emergence of each DM considered for that
specific language.

Chapter 7 deals with the emergence of DMs in contexts of language
contact. The chapter adopts a comparative typological perspective and
aims to show that DMs can alternatively emerge in situations of
contact between different languages. With regard to the
contact-induced development of DMs, two mechanisms are taken into
consideration, i.e. the mechanism of ‘borrowing’ and the one of
‘contact-induced replication’. The authors point out that the
emergence of DMs via contact-induced replication is difficult to
reconstruct, while the emergence via borrowing is easy to identify (p.
213). Furthermore, based on secondary literature, the chapter provides
an overview of various DMs that have emerged via borrowing due to the
contact of different languages (pp. 216–218; e.g., the Italian
‘allora’ in language regions such as Maltese where Italian is the most
spoken language, cf. the study of Stolz 2007). The chapter addresses
the question why DMs are often taken from one language and inserted
into texts of another language, considering both formal and functional
factors. According to the authors, the functional factors are mainly
related to three components, i.e., (i) text organization, (ii)
attitudes of the speakers, and (iii) speaker-hearer interaction; these
are discussed separately in the chapter. These components, which are
relevant with respect to theticals within the domain of discourse
grammar (Kaltenböck et al. 2011), also seem to be relevant in
situations of language contact. Finally, the chapter takes into
consideration Arabic as a source language for the acquisition of DMs
through borrowing across different languages spoken in the Islamic
world.

Chapter 8 offers a general discussion of the overall issues addressed
in the book (e.g., motivations for the emergence of DMs). It focuses
on different text segments that serve as a source for the formation of
DMs, highlighting possible constraints in the choice of a particular
segment. In addition, three types of DMs are discussed separately
(i.e., constituent anchored DMs, imperative-based DMs, and fillers).

Chapter 9 provides conclusions and suggestions for future research on
DMs.

EVALUATION

Overall, the book is very informative and rich in terms of
argumentation and discussion of theoretical content. In particular,
the first two chapters offer a comprehensive discussion of previous
research on the rise of DMs and the theory of grammaticalization. This
theoretical part of the book allows the reader to engage with various
theoretical issues and to better understand both the hypothesis
proposed by the authors for the development of DMs and the data
analysis of the central chapters. Right at the beginning of the book
(pp. 4–12), the authors take into account different properties and
thus definitions of DMs and propose a composite definition that can be
considered suitable for both diachronic and synchronic analyses.
Moreover, the treatment of the subject matter is comprehensive and
very insightful due to a broad analysis that focuses not only on the
diachronic processes that are involved in the rise of DMs, but also on
the placement of these linguistic realizations within grammar.

A clear division between sentence grammar and discourse grammar (cf.
Kaltenböck et al. 2011; Heine et al. 2013) characterizes the approach
of the entire study. This is made clear in the introduction, which
provides the reader with the general framework for the understanding
of the numerous issues addressed in the various chapters of the book.
Furthermore, in explaining the development of DMs, the authors
basically reject the pragmaticalization hypothesis as a distinct
process and explain the emergence of DMs as the result of the joint
effect of two different mechanisms, i.e. cooptation followed by
grammaticalization (p. 27). The model is based on the previous model
by Heine (2013), but in order to make the point clearer to the reader,
the authors discuss the mechanism of cooptation in a separate section
(2.3). In doing so, they also consider the challenges that it poses
for the reconstruction of diachronic processes. The hypothesis of the
rise of DMs through language contact is also a topic of discussion.

The book is meticulously structured and, despite the numerous internal
references that make reading a little challenging at times, each
section consistently builds upon the last and the work results in a
cohesive and comprehensive exploration of the subject matter.
Definitions and key points are numbered and separated from the main
body of the text, allowing the reader to quickly find and refer to
them.

The presentation of the data analysis is clear, supported by examples,
and offers several advantages. Among other things, it provides (i)
numerous references to the treatment of a specific DM, (ii) initial
observations on historical data that encourage the continuation of
corpus-based diachronic analyses, and (iii) a summary table at the end
of each case study chapter, indicating the date of the emergence of
each DM respectively.

The chapter dealing with DMs in contexts of language contact is
consistently different from the previous chapters dealing with case
studies. Although it does not provide the kind of in-depth analysis of
the previous chapters, as the authors themselves state, it fulfills
the general aim of the book, to provide a broad treatment of the
mechanisms behind the development of DMs. It collects numerous useful
references on DMs in contexts of language contact and provides a
theoretical framework for the hypothesis of the emergence of DMs in
situations of contact between different languages.

The overall discussion in Chapter 8 results in an exhaustive account
that covers all the relevant issues addressed in the book and offers a
discussion of some additional points. Moreover, it insightfully opens
up further research questions and clearly delineates possible paths
for future research.

The book is definitely a significant contribution to the fields of
language typology, functional and usage-based linguistics, and
historical-comparative linguistics. It provides a useful framework for
analyzing the rise of DMs and fruitfully encourages corpus-based
research that should also take historical data into consideration. Due
to the wide range of topics covered in the study and the extensive
discussion of previous research, this publication is definitely well
suited for a wide audience, including not only experienced scholars in
the field, but also young scholars and advanced students who are
interested in learning more about language change, grammaticalization
phenomena, and DMs.

REFERENCES

Heine, Bernd. 2013. On discourse markers: Grammaticalization,
pragmaticalization, or something else? Linguistics 51(6). 1205–1247.
Heine, Bernd, Kaltenböck, Gunther, Kuteva, Tania & Haiping Long. 2013.
An outline of discourse grammar (in Functional approaches to
Language). Berlin: de Gruyter. 175–233.
Kaltenböck, Gunther, Heine, Bernd & Tania Kuteva. 2011. On thetical
grammar. Studies in Language 35(4). 848–893.
Stolz, Thomas. 2007. Allora: On the recurrence of function-word
borrowing in contact situations with Italian as donor language (in
Connectivity in Grammar and Discourse). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
75–99.
Traugott, Elisabeth Closs. 2018. Modeling language change with
constructional networks (in Studies in Pragmatics 18). Leiden: Brill.
17–50.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Giuseppina di Bartolo is currently Feodor Lynen Fellow at the
University of Pavia, conducting a project on clause linkage strategies
in ancient and modern Indo-European languages, with a particular
emphasis on the combination of historical linguistic and typological
approaches. Since 2018, she has been research assistant at the
Department of Linguistics at the University of Cologne. Her main
research interests include clause combining, the syntax-pragmatics
interface, historical discourse analysis, diachrony of Ancient Greek,
and historical morphosyntax.



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