| Abstrakt: |
An often cited property of discourse markers is their ability to cluster. Precisely this property has so far received little dedicated scholarly attention, including for a marker as ubiquitous in spoken English as like. This paper, therefore, investigates like’s clustering behaviour in peer-to-peer interactions of native speakers of English. In total, 516 likeclusters were identified in our corpus. In the overwhelming majority of these clusters the two markers share scope over the same (part of the) utterance while maintaining their distinctive functions. The most frequent markers likecombines with in such Addition clusters are and, but, so, because/cos’and just. These clusters adhere to an almost invariant ordering pattern, in which the other markers nearly exclusively precede like. A functional analysis of all clusters involving these five markers demonstrates that likemay mirror the function of the preceding marker, act as a marker of elaboration or as a downtoner, and appears to reflect the speaker’s desire to present an account with a more engaging tone. The findings for likeprovide further support for the hypothesis that in clusters discourse markers maintain their functional independence but are syntactically constrained. Some specific uses, however, may hold the potential to evolve into more fixed combinations. |
Full text from SpringerLink