Cover not available

Article published In: Pragmatics
Vol. 32:4 (2022) ► pp.588–619

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB

Aspects of væ (‘and’) as a discourse marker in Persian

 | University of Isfahan
ORCiD logo with link | University of Isfahan | Sun Yat-sen University
Open Access logo
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 9 March 2022
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.21011.amo
Abstract
This study investigates the functions of væ (‘and’) as a discourse marker in Persian. More specifically, this study accounts for certain aspects of væ co-occurrences and their linearization order. Fraser’s model (. forthcoming. “Canonical Sequences of Discourse Markers in English.”) was mainly employed to classify the multiple functions conveyed by væ. A corpus-based approach was taken to provide an overview of væ co-occurrences with other discourse markers. The data were collected from both written and spoken corpora. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted to examine the frequency and the functional differences in the use of væ in the data – namely, elaboration, inferential, contrast, and alternation. The results of the study indicate the mobile nature of væ in its co-occurrences with other DMs. The findings also show that some modifications to . forthcoming. “Canonical Sequences of Discourse Markers in English.” DM co-occurrence principles are required to handle certain cases of language-specific behavior of væ in Persian. The configuration suggested for væ uses and its multi-functionality will also shed some lights on cross-linguistic studies of its counterparts in other languages.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Discourse markers and their co-occurrences
    • 2.1Discourse markers
    • 2.2Discourse marker co-occurrences
    • 2.3væ in Persian
  • 3.Data and method
  • 4.Functions of væ as a DM
    • 4.1Elaborative function
      • 4.1.1Addition
      • 4.1.2Specification
      • 4.1.3Temporal
    • 4.2Contrastive function
    • 4.3Inferential function
    • 4.4Alternative function
    • 4.5Topic-shifting function
  • 5.Results and discussion
    • 5.1Simultaneous multifunctionality of væ
      • i.Additional-temporal function
      • ii.Additional-contrastive function
      • iii.Additional-inferential function
      • iv.Specific-contrastive function
    • 5.2væ co-occurrences
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • List of Abbreviations
  • References
References (49)
References
Aijmer, Karin, and Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen. 2011. “Pragmatic Markers.” In Discursive Pragmatics 81, ed. by Jan Zienkowski, Jan-Ola Östman, and Jef Verschueren, 223–247. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2012. “The Essence of Mirativity.” Linguistic Typology 16 (3): 435–485. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Anvari, Hasan. 2001. Færhænge Soxæn. Tehran: Soxæn. [in Persian]Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bortfeld, Heather, Silvia D. Leon, Jonathan E. Bloom, Michael F. Schober, and Susan E. Brennan. 2001. “Disfluency Rates in Conversation: Effects of Age, Relationship, Topic, Role, and Gender.” Language and Speech 44 (2): 123–147. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bublitz, Wolfram. 2017. “Oral Features in Fiction.” In Pragmatics of Fiction, ed. by Miriam A. Locher, and Andreas H. Jucker, 235–263. De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Crible, Ludivine. 2017a. “Discourse Markers and (Dis)fluency in English and French.” International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 22 (2): 242–269. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017b. “Towards an Operational Category of Discourse Marker: A Definition and Its Model.” In Pragmatic Markers, Discourse Markers and Modal Particles, ed. by Chiara Fedriani, and Andrea Sansó, 99–124. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Crible, Ludivine, and Maria-Josep Cuenca. 2017. “Discourse Markers in Speech Characteristics and Challenges for Corpus Annotation.” Dialogue and Discourse 8 (2): 149–166. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Crible, Ludivine. 2020. “Weak and Strong Discourse Markers in Speech, Chat, and Writing: Do Signals Compensate for Ambiguity in Explicit Relations?” Discourse Processes 57 (9): 793–807. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Crible, Ludivine, and Liesbeth Degand. 2021. “Co-occurrence and Ordering of Discourse Markers in Sequences: A Multifactorial Study in Spoken French.” Journal of Pragmatics 1771: 18–28. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
De Klerk, Vivian. 2005. “Procedural Meanings of ‘Well’ in a Corpus of Xhosa English.” Journal of Pragmatics 37 (8): 1183–1205. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dér, Csilla. 2010. “On the Status of Discourse Markers.” Acta Linguistica Hungarica 57 (1): 3–28. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Faghiri, Pegah, and Pollet Samvelian. 2020. “Word Order Preferences and the Effect of Phrasal Length in SOV Languages: Evidence from Sentence Production in Persian.” Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 5 (1): 86. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fraser, Bruce. 1996. “Pragmatic Markers.” Pragmatics 6 (2): 167–190. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2009. “An Account of Discourse Markers.” International Review of Pragmatics 1 (2): 293–320. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. forthcoming. “Canonical Sequences of Discourse Markers in English.”
Ghaderi, Soleiman. 2019. Baresi Mo’tarezeh Are/Na dar Zabane Farsi [The Thetical Aspects of Are/Na (Yes/No), in Persian]. PhD Thesis, University of Isfahan.
Ghaderi, Soleiman, and Mohammad Amouzadeh. 2021. “Aspects of Are (Yes) in Persian Discourse: Its Functions, Positions, and Evolution.” Studia Linguistica 75 (3): 623–658. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
González, Montserrat. 2005. “Pragmatic Markers and Discourse Coherence Relations in English and Catalan Oral Narrative.” Discourse Studies 7 (1): 53–86. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grice, Herbert P. 1975. “Logic and Conversation.” In Syntax and Semantics Vol. 3: Speech Acts, ed. by Peter Cole, and Jerry L. Morgan, 41–58. Brill.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Habib, Rania. 2021. “The use of the Discourse Markers yaʕni and ʔinnu: ‘I mean’ in Syrian Arabic.” Journal of Pragmatics 1781: 245–257. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael Alexander Kirkwood, and Ruqaiya Hasan. 1976. Cohesion in English. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haselow, Alexander. 2019. “Discourse Marker Sequences: Insights into the Serial Order of Communicative Tasks in Real-time Turn Production.” Journal of Pragmatics 1461: 1–18. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heine, Bernd, Gunther Kaltenböck, Tania Kuteva, and Haiping Long. 2021. The Rise of Discourse Markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Horn, Paul. 1893. Grundriss der Neupersischen Etymologie. Strassburg: Karl J. Trübner. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kassaei, Gholamreza, and Mohammad Amouzadeh. 2020. “The Combination of Discourse Markers in Persian.” International Review of Pragmatics 12 (1): 135–163. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kent, Roland G. 1953. Old Persian: Grammar. Texts. Lexicon. New Haven: American Oriental Society.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kuteva, Tania, Bernd Heine, Peter Austin, Seongha Rhee, Marine Vuilermet, and Domenico Niclot. 2017. “The ‘Mirror’ of Insubordination.” Linguistics Departmental Seminar Series, SOAS University of London. Available at: [URL]
Lambton, Ann KS. 1953. Persian Grammar: Including Key. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lazard, Gilbert. 1992. A Grammar of Contemporary Persian. Cosa Mesa: Mazda Publishers.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levy, Roger, and T. Florian Jaeger. 2007. “Speakers Optimize Information Density through Syntactic Reduction.” In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), ed. by Bernhard Schölkopf, John Platt, and Thomas Hofmann, 849–856. MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lohmann, Arne, and Christian Koops. 2016. “Aspects of Discourse Marker Sequencing – Emprical Challenges and Theoretical Implications.” In Outside the Clause: Forms and Functions of Extra-clausal Constituents, ed. by Gunther Kaltenbock, Evelien Keizer, and Arne Lohmann, 417–446. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mahootian, Shahrzad, and Lewis Gebhardt. 1997. Persian. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Oates, Sarah Louise. 2000. “Multiple Discourse Marker Occurrence: Creating Hierarchical for Natural Language.” In Procedding of the 3rd CLUK Colloquium, 41–45. Brighton.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2001. Multiple Discourse Occurrence: Creating Hierarchicies for Natural Languages Generation. MA dissertation. University of Brighton.
Onea, Edgar, and Anna Volodina. 2011. “Between Specification and Explanation: About a German Discourse Particle.” International Review of Pragmatics 3 (1): 3–32. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pinto, Derrin, and Donny Vigil. 2020. “Spanish Clicks in Discourse Marker Combinations.” Journal of Pragmatics 1591: 1–11. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Redeker, Gisela. 1990. “Ideational and Pragmatic Markers of Discourse Structure.” Journal of Pragmatics 14 (3): 367–381. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schiffrin, Deborah. 2001. “Discourse Markers: Language, Meaning, and Context.” In The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, ed. by Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen, and Heidi E. Hamilton, 54–74. Malden. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2006. “Discourse Marker Research and Theory: Revisiting and. In Approaches to Discourse Particles, ed. by Kerstin Fischer, 315–338. Oxford: Elsevier.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schourup, Lawrence. 1999. “Discourse Markers.” Lingua, 107 (3–4): 227–265. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Siebold, Kathrin. 2021. “German dann – From Adverb to Discourse Marker.” Journal of Pragmatics 1751: 129–145. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stilo, Donald. 2004. “Coordination in Three Western Iranian Languages: Vafsi, Persian and Gilaki.” In Coordinating Constructions, ed. by Martin Haspelmath, 269–330. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sweetser, Eve. 1990. From Etymology to Pragmatics: Metaphorical and Cultural Aspects of Semantic Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vanderbauwhede, Gudrun, and Béatrice Lamiroy. 2020. “On Two French Discourse Markers and Their Dutch Equivalents: d’ailleurs and par ailleurs.” Journal of Pragmatics 1561: 168–175. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zoghdar-Moghadam, Reza, and Mohammad Dabirmoghadam. 2002. “Contrastive Discourse Markers: The Case of “but” in English and “amma” in Persian.” Language Researches 7 (12), 55–76. [in Persian]Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (6)

Cited by six other publications

Kazemian, Reza, Mohammad Amouzadeh & Homa Asadi
2025. The interface of prosody and pragmatics: A phono-pragmatic analysis of bebin (‘look’) in Persian. Language & Communication 104 ► pp. 29 ff. DOI logo
Kazemian, Reza, Mohammad Amouzadeh, Bernd Heine & Hadaegh Rezaei
2025. Beyond sentence grammar: Persian directives in interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 236 ► pp. 40 ff. DOI logo
Tajeddin, Zia & Maryam Bolouri
2025. Acquisition of Discourse Markers by Second Language Learners of Persian in the Study-Abroad Context. In Handbook of Teaching and Learning Persian as a Second Language [Springer Handbooks in Languages and Linguistics, ], ► pp. 315 ff. DOI logo
Tajeddin, Zia & Maryam Bolouri
2025. Acquisition of Discourse Markers by Second Language Learners of Persian in the Study-Abroad Context. In Handbook of Teaching and Learning Persian as a Second Language [Springer Handbooks in Languages and Linguistics, ], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Fu, Yanli & Victor Ho
2022. Discourse markers in TV interviews: A corpus-based comparative study of Chinese and the western media. Frontiers in Psychology 13 DOI logo
Kazemian, Reza
2022. Book review. Journal of Pragmatics 202 ► pp. 4 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue