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In:Outside the Clause: Form and function of extra-clausal constituents
Edited by Gunther Kaltenböck, Evelien Keizer and Arne Lohmann
[Studies in Language Companion Series 178] 2016
► pp. 417–446

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Aspects of discourse marker sequencing

Empirical challenges and theoretical implications

 | University of Vienna
 | University of New Mexico
Published online: 3 October 2016
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.178.14loh
In research on Discourse Markers (DMs) it has long been noted that DMs frequently occur in sequences, e.g., oh well or you know I mean. Despite the ubiquity of this phenomenon and occasional citations of examples in studies on individual DMs, the combinatory behavior of DMs has received only limited attention as a theoretically relevant phenomenon in its own right. This chapter provides an overview of the phenomenon that synthesizes the results of prior research, complemented with new analyses of our own. We separately address two different aspects of DM sequencing. The first is the question of co-occurrence of DMs, that is, which DMs combine frequently with one another. The second aspect concerns the ordering of DMs when occurring in sequence. In discussing the results of empirical studies of both of these aspects we outline what research on DMs and the structure of the clause periphery stands to gain from studying DM sequences.
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