Doctoral Dissertation Research: From the Distal Demonstrative to a Stance Marker: On na in Mandarin Chinese Conversation

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All languages have words to indicate entities that are being referred to. These words (e.g. this and that), known in linguistics as demonstratives, are typically used to focus the hearer's attention on entities in the speech situation. Over time, some of these words evolve and may develop various kinds of new functions such as connectives and hesitation signals. Despite the universality of demonstratives across languages, demonstratives differ in how they change and why they evolve in certain ways. Although demonstratives have long been a key research topic in linguistics, we know surprisingly little about how demonstratives and demonstrative-derived pragmatic markers are used in spontaneous face-to-face conversation. This is due to the fact that the most commonly used genres in linguistic analysis are written discourse and oral narratives rather than spoken discourse. The results and transcriptions will help applied linguists and L2 educators develop more effective materials for teaching Mandarin Chinese, a critical language designated by the U.S. government. The project database will enhance the infrastructure for language-related research and education, and will contribute to the training of students. This dissertation project recognizes the methodological limitations in previous text-based analyses and investigates how the distal demonstrative na 'that' is used in Mandarin Chinese everyday conversation from a discourse-pragmatic perspective. Apart from its canonical usage as a distal demonstrative, na has various kinds of extended and nuanced discourse functions. This project sets out to identify and classify different uses of na, with a special focus on its previously overlooked non-referential discourse pragmatic functions. More specifically, it will uncover sequential contexts, functional accounts, and positions of na using both a quantitative approach and qualitative analysis. The primary goal is to offer a systematic analysis that accounts for all the occurrences and functions of na by speakers in actual everyday conversation. The secondary goal is to shed light on a better understanding of robust similarities and subtle language specific variations in the grammaticalization and/or pragmaticalization of demonstratives, particularly the non-deictic uses of pragmatic markers derived from demonstratives. This dissertation project will contribute to a deeper understanding of a common human language phenomenon with fresh data and from an interactional perspective.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.