The Situation of Discourse: Evidence from Discourse Markers Bernd Heine and Gunther Kaltenböck One of the main problems associated with research on discourse markers concerns their meaning. A large body of rich analyses has been presented, based on a range of different frameworks, such as conversation analysis, relevance theory, cognitive linguistics, or grammaticalization theory, to deal with the complexity of functions that discourse markers exhibit. The goal of the present paper is restricted in scope. Based on a comparative survey of 24 English information units that have beeen classified as discourse markers, it uses the framework of Discourse Grammar to relate the functions of these markers to the situation of discourse. The findings presented suggest on the one hand that these functions can be reduced essentially to a network of three components, namely the organization of texts, the attitudes of the speaker, and speaker-hearer interaction. On the other hand, they also suggest that it is the planning and structuring of texts that is the primary concern of speakers when they draw on discourse markers. But designing texts does not appear to be a means to an end; rather it serves the interlocutors to achieve their communicative goals in what they conceive to be the best way possible. 1. Introduction The concern of this paper is with English discourse markers (DMs), also called discourse particles, pragmatic markers, discourse operators, discourse connectives, adverbials, connecting adverbials, conjunctions, etc., or even “vocal hickups” (Croucher 2004). But this does not exhaust the list of terms and classifications that have been proposed. For example, some of the conjuncts and disjuncts of Quirk et al. (1985), stance adverbs (Powell 1992), stance adverbials (Biber et al. 1999), or interjections (Dubois 1989; AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 47 · Heft 1 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen DOI 10.24053/ AAA-2022-0001 Bernd Heine and Gunther Kaltenböck 6 Redeker 1990: 373-4; Aijmer 2002; Cuenca 2008) have also been subsumed under the label DM, in accordance with the conventions proposed by the respective authors. DMs have been the subject of many studies (e.g., Schourup 1982, 1999; Schiffrin 1987, 2001; Fraser 1988, 1990, 1999; Hölker 1991; Jucker 1993: 436, 1997; Maschler 1994; Traugott 1995, 2007; Brinton 1996, 2008: 1, 15; Jucker & Ziv 1998: 1-5; Hansen 1998a, 1998b, 2005, 2008; Gohl & Günthner 1999: 59-63; Günthner 1999, 2000; Fox Tree & Schrock 1999; Martín Zorraquino & Portolés 1999; Andersen & Fretheim 2000; Fischer 2000, 2006, 2007; Barth-Weingarten & Couper-Kuhlen 2002: 352; Aijmer 2002, 2013, 2016; Traugott & Dasher 2002: 154-157; Dostie 2004; Auer & Günthner 2005: 334; Günthner & Mutz 2004; Furkó 2005, 2012; Müller 2005; Siepmann 2005; Kaltenböck 2007: 31; Brinton 2008: 1, 15; Dér 2010; Defour et al. 2010; Defour & Simon-Vandenbergen 2010; Degand & Simon-Vandenbergen 2011; Lewis 2011; Simon-Vandenbergen & Willems 2011; Arroyo 2011; Degand et al. 2013; Beeching 2016; Brinton 2017; Crible 2017; Heine et al. 2021). We will be using the term “discourse marker” (DM) in a loose sense based on the prototypical definition to be proposed in (2) below. Our concern will be with the functions of DMs. But no attempt is made to relate the analysis proposed here to taxonomic notions such as polysemy, monosemy, etc. (see, e.g., Hansen 1998a: 85-90). The term “function” subsumes what a number of other authors call meanings or senses (cf. Aijmer 2002: 21-2). That the meaning of DMs is highly complex is well documented. The English items oh and ah are traditionally classified as interjections or exclamations indicating surprise, fear, pain, pleasure, and other emotional states (Ameka 1992; Wharton 2003). But, as we will see below, the discourse functions of these, as well as of other items to be discussed in the paper, go far beyond expressing emotional states (Schiffrin 1987: 73ff.; Aijmer 2002). In a similar fashion, the item no may well be characterized as a negation marker, but once deployed for purposes of discourse organization, it may assume functions that have little in common with negation (Lee-Goldman 2011). We will therefore not aim at a narrow definition of DMs in this paper but rather follow the classification of the various studies consulted as long as it conforms to our definition in (2) below. Rather than presenting a new analysis of DMs, our goal is a narrow one. We will rely on the framework of Discourse Grammar to determine how the functions of DMs relate to the situation of discourse and, more specifically, to whether a study of DMs can contribute toward a better understanding of this framework (Kaltenböck et al. 2011: 860-4; Heine et al. 2013, 2021). The paper is organized as follows. Section 3 is the main part, where a comparative survey of English DMs is discussed. To this end we provide a sketch of the adopted framework of Discourse Grammar in Section 2.1 and relate this framework to the functions of DMs in Section 2.2. Section 4, The Situation of Discourse: Evidence from Discourse Markers 7 finally, proposes some generalizations and draws attention to questions that could not be addressed or answered in the paper. 2. General issues 2.1. The framework of Discourse Grammar Discourse Grammar, as proposed by Kaltenböck et al. (2011) and Heine et al. (2013), is based on the assumption that there are two domains of discourse organization that need to be distinguished, referred to respectively as Sentence Grammar and Thetical Grammar. An outline of its architecture is provided in Figure 1. Sentence Grammar is well documented; it has been the main or the only subject of theories of mainstream linguistics. It is organized in terms of parts of speech or constituent types such as sentences, clauses, phrases, words, and morphemes, plus the syntactic and morphological machinery to relate constituents to one another. Thetical Grammar consists of a catalog of theticals, that is, formulae and constructions as well as the ability to design new theticals and to deploy them for structuring discourse (see below for their defining properties). The main categories of theticals distinguished so far are illustrated in (1). DMs can be described as a type of “grammaticalized thetical” (Heine 2013; Heine et al. 2021; but see also Section 3). (1) Categories of Thetical Grammar (Kaltenböck et al. 2011; Heine et al. 2013) a. He is very competent, actually. Conceptual thetical b. Good morning! Formula of social exchange c. Today’s topic, ladies and gentlemen, is astrophysics. Vocative 1 d. Hold on, are we late? Imperative e. Damn, we’ve missed the bus. Interjection The defining properties of DMs are listed in (2). Note that this definition is prototypical rather than discrete. With the exception of (e) and (f), DMs share all properties with other kinds of theticals (Kaltenböck et al. 2011: 853). 1 A number of languages, such as Latin, have vocative as a morphological (case) category. This fact is immaterial to the present discussion, which is restricted to “vocative” as a discourse category. Bernd Heine and Gunther Kaltenböck 8 (2) Properties defining discourse markers (Heine 2013, Heine et al. 2021) a. They are syntactically independent from their environment. b. They are typically set off prosodically from the rest of the utterance. c. Their meaning is non-restrictive. d. They tend to be positionally mobile. e. Their meaning is mainly procedural rather than conceptual-propositional (Blakemore 1987, 2002). f. They are non-compositional and as a rule short. The term “non-restrictive”, taken from Huddleston and Pullum (2002: 1352), indicates that non-restrictive meaning is not anchored in the structure of a sentence or its constituents but rather concerns reasoning processes that, as we argue here, are grounded in the situation of discourse (see below). Figure 1. A sketch of the architecture of Discourse Grammar With regard to their internal compositionality, conceptual theticals can be of three different kinds, namely instantaneous, constructional, or formulaic. The items to be discussed below are for the most part formulaic theticals, that is, prefabricated and largely frozen, invariable information units (Kaltenböck et al. 2011). 2 DMs are theticals, that is, they belong to Thetical Grammar, but most of them have homophonous, or nearly homophonous counterparts in Sentence Grammar. The latter are said to carry the source meaning of the unit 2 Instantaneous theticals are fully compositional and can be formed freely any time and anywhere. Constructional theticals, by contrast, are recurrent patterns or constructions of theticals. Unlike formulaic theticals, they are compositional but have some schematic structure and function (see Kaltenböck et al. 2011: 870-1; Heine et al. 2013 for more details). Discourse Grammar Sentence Grammar Thetical Grammar … Conceptual Formulae of Vocatives Imperatives Interjections … theticals social exchange The Situation of Discourse: Evidence from Discourse Markers 9 concerned (e.g., Bell 2009: 919). Our interest here is exclusively with the functions of DMs, not with those of their Sentence Grammar counterparts. The distinction between DM and Sentence Grammar units is described by Taglicht (2001) with reference to actually as one between marginal (referred by him as actually 1 ) and integral elements (actually 2 ), which, he suggests, are also lexically distinct. Whereas the marginal one is a discourse modifier, the integral one is a propositional modifier. As we argue here, actually 1 , illustrated in (3a), is a DM (i.e. a thetical) while actually 2 is an adverb of Sentence Grammar, cf. (3b). (3) a. This one, actually, I rather like. b. Some of them are actually poisonous. (Taglicht 2001: 4-5) Properties distinguishing the marginal from the integral item actually 2 are found in Table 1. The table provides support for our claim that actually 1 is a DM, that is, a thetical: Not being an immediate constitutent of the utterance to which it is attached, its function and scope are also detached. And it also tends to be prosodically distinguished, though not consistently (Taglicht 2001: 7-8). Note that actually 1 , but not actually 2 , is frequently separated from the rest of the utterance by punctuation marks. Accordingly, if there are punctuation marks setting acually off from the rest of an utterance, we are dealing with the DM rather than the lexical verb. Marginal actually 1 Integral actually 2 Syntax Is not an immediate constituent, is an “adjunct” (or disjunct and conjunct) Can serve as immediate constituent, but not as adjunct of a VP Meaning Is incompatible with some other proposition, is not truth-insistent Is either scalar or truth-insistent 3 Scope Is not in the scope of negation Is in the scope of negation, has local scope Position Free (cf. (2d)) Fixed; it is the initial element of a sentence constituent Table 1. Properties distinguishing the DM actually from its Sentence Grammar counterpart (based on Taglicht 2001) 3 The use of these two terms is described by Taglicht (2001: 2) thus: “When the speaker uses ‘scalar’ actually 2 in some phrase ..., he is envisaging a scale of properties with the content of that phrase at the top, and implying that any property below it on the scale would make the expression too weak. The ‘truth-insistent’ use of actually 2 serves to contrast what is really so with what is only pretended or imagined.” Bernd Heine and Gunther Kaltenböck 10 According to Kaltenböck et al. (2011), theticals are not anchored in the structure of a sentence or its constituents but rather concern reasoning processes that are anchored in the situation of discourse (see (2c) above). The situation of discourse is composed of a network of the functional components listed in (4). (4) Components of the situation of discourse (Kaltenböck et al. 2011: 861)  Text Organization (TO)  Source of Information (SI)  Attitudes of the Speaker (AS)  Speaker-Hearer Interaction (SH)  Discourse Setting (DS)  World Knowledge (WK) The components distinguished in (4) were reconstructed on the basis of a large body of data on theticals other than DMs (Kaltenböck et al. 2011; Heine et al. 2013). The main goal of the present paper now is to find out how these components relate to the functions of DMs. As we will argue in Section 3, the components are also relevant for describing the behavior of DMs, our goal being, as Aijmer and Simon-Vandenbergen (2004: 1783) put it, “to explain the anchoring of utterances in the discourse context”. 2.2. The functions of DMs As observed by Kaltenböck et al. (2011), the exact nature of the network underlying the situation of discourse is still in need of clarification. We are restricted here to looking into the following interrelated questions: (5) a. Are the functions of DMs shaped by the situation of discourse in the same way as other theticals (see Kaltenböck et al. 2011)? b. If yes, can the study of DMs be of help in understanding the internal structure of the network characterizing the situation of discourse? To answer these questions, we will look at a range of what have been proposed to be English DMs whose functions have been fairly well documented. DMs are theticals (see Section 2.1, see also Heine 2013); hence we expect the answer to question (5a) to be in the affirmative, thereby providing insights into the way meaning is handled in Thetical Grammar. Note, however, that DMs are by no means characteristic of theticals as a whole, for the following interrelated reasons. First, belonging to one specific set of theticals, namely that of formulaic theticals (see Section 2.1), they are not The Situation of Discourse: Evidence from Discourse Markers 11 really representative of theticals in general (Heine et al. 2013). And second, they do not appear to exploit the entire range of the functions associated with the use of theticals, as we will see in Section 3. Work on the functions of English DMs suggests that there might be some features that distinguish DMs from many other kinds of information units. One possibly specific feature is that, more than other meaningful units, they require quite some amount of inferencing for their decoding (Aijmer 2002: 39). Another feature, one that turns up in many of the accounts of DMs, is that they exhibit an unusual amount of polyfunctionality (or multifunctionality). Polyfunctionality can be contextually determined, in that a given DM has one function in one context and a different function in another context. But it may also mean overlapping, in that two (or more) different functions are simultaneously present in a given utterance and context. For example, Imo (2005) observes that the DM I mean does not seem to have only interpersonal functions but always also aspects of textual functions. In cases of this kind, both functions can be equally salient, or else one of the functions is more salient, dominant, or foregrounded, or “prototypical”. The notion of “function” (or meaning, or sense) stands for a range of different kinds of semantic features in the literature on DMs. Since we will be relying on the descriptions of DMs volunteered by other authors, phrased in a variety of different frameworks, we will use the term in a loose sense. 3. A survey In the present section we will look at 24 English information units that have - at least by some authors - been classified as DMs, even if there is some disagreement on whether they all really qualify as such. These DMs are listed in (6). Most of them have Sentence Grammar counterparts which function as adverbs, verbs, reduced clauses, etc. of Sentence Grammar, all of which are ignored here (see Section 2.1). Our analysis is based exclusively on descriptions that are available in published works (see the References for details). A number of these DMs have been subjected to more than one analysis, and we will treat each analysis separately and in its own right. This means that we will be dealing altogether with 47 different analyses. The choice of these DMs was dictated by the availability of data that were immediately available to us. (6) English DMs analyzed here actually (Lenk 1998; Smith & Jucker 2000; Taglicht 2001; Clift 2001; Aijmer 1988, 1997, 2002), ah (Aijmer 2002), anyway (Ferrara 1997; Park 2010), of course (Wichmann et al. 2010; Furkó 2012), I find (Brinton 2008: 232-4), hey Bernd Heine and Gunther Kaltenböck 12 (Dubois 1989), incidentally (Lenk 1998; Fraser 2009), you know (Fox Tree & Schrock 2002), look (Brinton 2008: 185-7), I mean (Fox Tree & Schrock 2002; Imo 2005; Brinton 2008: 112-8), mind you (Bell 2009), no (Lee-Goldman 2011), now (Aijmer 1988, 2002; Schourup 2011), oh (Schiffrin 1987: 73-101; Aijmer 2002), okey (Gaines 2011), you see (Brinton 2008: 134-6), so (Schiffrin 1987: 191-227; Howe 1991; Johnson 2002; Bolden 2009), then (Haselow 2011), I think (Kärkkäinen 2003; Kaltenböck 2010), well (Schiffrin 1987: 102-27; Jucker 1993, 1997; Aijmer & Simon-Vandenbergen 2003; González 2004; Cuenca 2008), as it were (Brinton 2008: 167), what else (Lenk 1998: 189-202; Brinton 2008: 205), what’s more (Brinton 2008: 205), if you will (Brinton 2008: 163-6) DMs were characterized in Section 2.1 as grammaticalized theticals, and most of them belong to the category of conceptual theticals (see 2.1, (1)). But some of those listed in (6) relate to other categories of theticals, namely that of formulae of social exchange (okey), imperatives (look, mind you), and interjections (ah, oh) (see Heine et al. 2013). 3.1. Classifying functions The present paper rests on a comparative analysis of functions (or meanings or senses) exhibited by DMs. The functions to be distinguished are essentially those identified by the authors cited. Since there is not always sufficient information in the sources concerned, no distinction is made between overlapping and contextually distinguished functions. This means that different functions of a given DM can either be observed in one and the same utterance and use of a DM or else be associated each with some specific context (see 2.2 above). The functions identified by the authors concerned are classified in accordance with the components of the situation of discourse discussed in Section 2.1. As our analysis suggests, it is essentially only three of the components listed in (4) that surface in the functions of DMs, namely the following: (i) Text organization, (ii) attitudes of the spekaer, (iii) speakerhearer interaction. Text organization (TO). We will say that this component is involved when the DM can be assumed to serve the planning or structuring of the discourse of which the DM is a part. More general clusters of functions to be distinguished are: a. The structure of the text (planning, coherence between text pieces, boundaries between text pieces, repairs), b. the information structure (relating to functions of participants, highlighting or emphasizing, etc.), and c. the content of the text (elaboration, modification of content). The Situation of Discourse: Evidence from Discourse Markers 13 The following example illustrates the predominantly TO function of the DM as it were (e.g., Brinton 2008: 167), which acts as a temporary gapfiller and thus facilitates online planning and may also signal that the speaker is uncertain whether his choice of words is the most appropriate here: 4 (7) I mean the the way Mr Griffiths fastens on his heroines and the camera from that moment on exploits women in a particular way right the way through the whole of cinema up to this day. Very rarely has that been uh as it were subverted (ICE-GB: s1b-045-084) Similarly in example (8) the DM now functions as a textual organizer, more specifically a topic changer, which marks the introduction of a new main point in the talk. As noted by Aijmer (1988: 22), it “points forward towards an upcoming argument, the main topic or a new development in the conversation”. (8) Uhm the pastoralists are particularly found in Africa <,> uhm there are a few in Asia as well <,> Uhm demographically they’re very interesting because yery little work has been done on pastoralists ,> uhm despite which theories abound <,> uhm but usually with very little evidence <,> Uhm now why is there <,> so little dat such little data on pastoralists <,> Well one of the reasons is that… (ICE-GB: s2a-047- 008) Attitudes of the Speaker (AS). This component is involved when the DM can be assumed to serve the expression of the “inner state” of the speaker. The following functions can be distinguished in particular: a. The speaker’s emotional state (emotions), b. the speaker’s mental state (experiences, conclusions, degree of commitment), and c. the speaker’s stance on the content of the text or other aspects of the situation of discourse. An example of this component is given in (9), where the DM I mean shifts the perspective to a more personal expression of the speaker (e.g., Brinton 2008: 116-7): 5 4 The following examples are taken from ICE-GB, the British component of the International Corpus of English (Nelson et al. 2002). 5 In accordance with the multifunctionality of DMs, (9) can also be interpreted as signaling elaboration, that is, as relating to the component of TO. Bernd Heine and Gunther Kaltenböck 14 (9) Well the thing was that the whole point was that we were going to have strawberries and cream I mean it’d be left to me to organise it (ICE-GB: s1a-005-220) Another example of a DM marking an utterance as personal opinion is I think, as in (10). Here it co-occurs with another marker of personal opinion, actually, which has been noted as a common pattern of double marking to emphasize the speaker’s position (Lenk 1998: 161; Aijmer 2013: 111). (10) B: It’s quite large quite definitely children too yes A: Uhm yes yes yes it is Uhm <,> and and I think actually it’s quite telling because if you were to do that and add it up at the end of the six months you think oh you know I had to "> That was more than I thought (ICE-GB: s1b-072-132) Speaker-Hearer Interaction (SH). This component is involved when the DM concerns the relationship between speaker (S) and hearer (H). The following main clusters of functions may be distinguished: a. Requests for action (S asks H to act, S asks for H’s attention, S asks H to accept a proposal, S asks H for information, S asks H to yield the turn), b. speaker’s comments on hearer’s stance (S agrees with H, S takes a stance that contrasts with that of H, S conveys his/ her stance to H), and c. the role relations between interlocutors (S asks H to assume speakership, S and H negotiate their social roles, S proposes a change in social conventions). Compare, for instance, the following example, where look has an attentiongetter function (e.g., Brinton 2008: 185-7): (11) No I have enjoyed doing it <,> But the the thing Look the thing is if you’re in this kind of work you’ve to have plenty of other interests on the other side your side of life (ICE-GB: s1b-026-228) In example (12), on the other hand, the DM well is used as a turn-taking device, which allows the speaker to take control in the conversation (Aijmer, 2013: 34). Frequently in this function well is followed by a pause (ibid.). (12) B: So uhm So he’s going to punch the details into a <unclear-word> screen <,> A: Well "> if there’s anything if there’s anything in one of the letters that I think is vaguely chatty I’m obviously David I’m not going to give him any of the personal stuff am I "> (Aijmer 2013: 34; ICE-GB: s1a- 092-323) The Situation of Discourse: Evidence from Discourse Markers 15 One may wonder what justification there is to distinguish these components. While we have no formal criteria in support of the distinction, it seems to reflect distinctions surfacing from the descriptions provided by the authors cited, who tend to point out whether a given DM relates to the organization and presentation of texts, the status of the speaker, or the relation between speaker and hearer. The distinction of the three components, Text Organization (TO), Attitudes of the Speaker (AS), and Speaker- Hearer Interaction (SH) also relates to what Ljung (2011: 87-88) calls the three main functions of pragmatic markers, namely textuality, subjectivity, and interactivity, respectively. Nevertheless, separating these components neatly from one another is not always easy. When a speaker exposes his/ her intentions, thoughts, feelings, etc. (i.e. functions relating to AS) then s/ he is likely to do so with reference to other interlocutors (SH), and this is likely to have a bearing on the organization of his/ her text (TO). And, conversely, when s/ he addresses the hearer for some purpose (SH) then this is likely to also reflect to some extent his/ her attitudes (AS), and it may also have an impact on the way s/ he organizes his/ her discourse (TO). This means that it is at times hard to decide which of the components is most salient, whether there are two components that are equally salient, or whether a component is salient enough to be represented in our classification. In fact, the components tend to overlap to quite some extent, not only contextually but also within one and the same use of a DM. For example, as the description by Aijmer (2002) suggests, the DM actually serves in final position simultaneously functions of all three components: It can be interpersonal and positively polite (SH), serve to soften what has been said (TO), and foreground a subjective opinion (AS). The quantitative distribution of functions based on the above classifications is found in Table 2. As the figures presented there suggest, DMs can serve a wide range of different functions. Clearly the most salient component involved is TO, which accounts for more than half of all occurrences (55.1 %). Within this component, the following three general functions are most prominent: To establish coherence between text pieces (see, e.g., Östman 1995), to address functions of information structure, and to elaborate on or modify the text. Within the component AS, expressing the speaker’s stance appears to be the function most frequently invoked. The component SH draws on a wide array of functions where none clearly stands out. Bernd Heine and Gunther Kaltenböck 16 Functions No. of occurrences Percentage Text Organization (TO) 92 55.1 % Attitudes of the Speaker (AS) 33 19.7 % Speaker-Hearer Interaction (SH) 42 25.2 % Total 167 100 % Table 2. Functions of 24 English discourse markers according to components In order to establish that the behavior of these English DMs is not crosslinguistically unusual, we carried out a control survey with a small set of 13 DMs from languages other than English for which appropriate descriptions were available to us. These markers are: Bulgarian xajde (Tchizmarova 2005), French bon (Hansen 1998b), German bloß, nur, jedenfalls, ich meine, obwohl, sag mal, ick=sag=mal=so, und? , weil, and wobei (Auer & Günthner 2005), Portuguese pronto (Soares da Silva 2006), and Turkish yaani (Ruhi 2009). Table 3 lists the functions of the non-English DMs according to components. That the number of functions found in these DMs is generally lower than that found in English is presumably not due to language-specific differences but rather to the fact that many of the English markers have been studied in greater detail than the non-English ones. On the whole, the figures in Table 3 suggest that there are some striking similarities in the frequency of occurrence betwen the English and the non- English DMs. First, the component of TO accounts clearly for the largest number of DM uses, exceeding that of the other two components taken together. Second, the other two components appear to be of equal importance for designing texts, each accounting roughly for one fifth of all uses of DMs. And third, on the basis of these findings it would seem that all three components jointly contribute to shaping the meanings of DMs and to building discourse structures, while the other components of (4) appear to be of secondary import. Functions Number of occurrences Percentage Percentage of English DMs (from Table 2) Text Organization 18 64.2 % 59.0 % Attitudes of the Speaker 5 17.9 % 22.9 % Speaker-Hearer Interaction 5 17.9 % 18.1 % Total 28 100 % 100 % Table 3. Functions of 13 discourse markers of Bulgarian, French, German, Portuguese, and Turkish according to components The Situation of Discourse: Evidence from Discourse Markers 17 3.2. Combinations of functions We observed in Section 2.1 that the exact nature of the network underlying the situation of discourse is a matter of further research. What appears to surface from the observations made in the preceding section is, first, that the functions of the DMs surveyed differ greatly from those of their Sentence Grammar counterparts, second, that essentially all of the functions exhibited by DMs refer to the situation of discourse, rather than being defined with reference for instance to syntactic or semantic relations within the utterance. And third, these functions appear to be restricted to a specific spectrum of the network underlying the situation of discourse, namely the components TO, AS, SH. The question that will be looked into in the present section is the following: Which of the components are involved in the use of a particular DM? As the literature on DMs suggests, there are a number of DMs that are restricted essentially to one of the three components. For example, the topic orientation markers of Fraser (2009) are largely confined to TO. But according to perhaps the prevailing view expressed in works on this subject matter, DMs are inherently polyfunctional or, in terms of the present framework, involve simultaneously more than one component. We will now look at the DMs mentioned above with a view to determining how they behave with regard to this issue. Table 4 gives an overview of the combinations of functional domains associated with each of the English DMs listed in (6). Once again, we treat each analysis proposed by a given author in its own right, which means that there may be more than one combination associated with one DM in cases where authors disagree in their analyses. Components Number of analyses of English DMs Percentage TO 8 17.0 % AS 1 2.1 % SH 1 2.1 % TO + AS 7 14.9 % TO + SH 11 23.4 % TO + AS + SH 18 38.4 % AS + SH 1 2.1 % Total 47 100 % Table 4. Combinations of functions in 24 English DMs (47 analyses) according to components: Number of occurrences Bernd Heine and Gunther Kaltenböck 18 The figures presented in Table 4 suggest the following. First, there are both “monofunctional” and “polyfunctional” DMs, where the former are restricted to one of the components and the latter combine functions of more than one component. 6 Second, the number of the former is small (21.2 %) compared to “polyfunctional” DMs (78.8 %). Third, the largest group consists of DMs that combine all three components, i.e. that are maximally polyfunctional. Fourth, AS and SH are fairly insignificant both as part of a combination and as the only components associated with DMs. And finally, if there is a combination of components then it is unlikely to exclude TO. These observations are in accordance with the finding made in Section 3.1 according to which TO is the most salient function of the English DMs surveyed. Compared to this component, AS and SH are fairly insignificant, both in English and in the other languages examined. With reference to the situation of discourse this means that there are three main types of functional conglomerations, differing from one another in their relative degree of complexity and frequency of occurrence: The most complex and most frequent type is TO + AS + SH, accounting for more than one third of all uses, followed by conglomerations combining two components (TO + AS or TO + SH), while uses involving one component only are the least frequent, with the notable exception of TO. Figure 2 is an attempt to visualize what this means with reference to the overall structure of the situation of discourse. Figure 2. The situation of discourse: Functional components involved in 24 English DMs. (No line = below 5 % of occurrences, simple line = 10- 30 %, bold line = more than 30 % of occurrences) 6 The terms “monofunctional” and “polyfunctional” are used here in a specific sense. In this sense, for example, a DM restricted to different functional uses all located within one component would still be defined as “monofunctional”. Speaker-Hearer Interaction Attitudes of Speaker Text Organization Source of information Discourse Setting World Knowledge The Situation of Discourse: Evidence from Discourse Markers 19 On the basis of these findings, a few generalizations can be proposed, namely the ones in (13). (13) Generalizations on the functional components of 24 English DMs a. The clear majority of DMs is “polyfunctional”, that is, involves more than one component. b. That DMs are restricted in their functions to one component only is exceptional, unless that component is TO. c. If there is a combination of more than one component then this combination is likely to include TO. It would seem safe to conclude on account of these findings that TO is the most salient of all components -in other words, the primary function of DMs appears to be to organize texts. This is also the conclusion reached in some form or other by a number of other researchers (e.g., Aijmer & Simon- Vandenbergen 2004). 4. Conclusions It goes without saying that the findings presented have to be taken with care. First, the sample used in the paper is too small to allow for significant generalizations. Second, what we proposed to call “functions” of DMs is a somewhat disparate group of values proposed by the authors cited. Whether, or to what extent these “functions” can really be classified as conventionalized meanings, polysemes, heterosemes, or represent simply “side-effects” (Waltereit 2002: 1000-1), implicatures, or context-induced reinterpretations of a given DM is open to question. Nevertheless, the quantitative data presented in Section 3 allow for a number of observations on the structure of the situation of discourse. First, as already pointed out in Section 3.1, the DMs looked at do not exploit the whole potential that the situation of discourse provides for expressing meanings: Our data suggest that discourse markers respond essentially to the question of who says what to whom and how -that is, to the components of Text Organization, Attitudes of the Speaker, and Speaker-Hearer Interaction of Discourse Grammar. The remaining components listed in (4), i.e., Source of Information, Discourse Setting, and World Knowledge, appear to be of secondary import in shaping the functions of DMs. To be sure, the latter components may also be present in some form or other. For example, DMs are shaped to a considerable extent by the expectation horizon of speakers (cf. Aijmer & Simon-Vandenbergen 2004), and expectations may be based on the source of information, the discourse setting, and generally the encyclopedic knowledge that is accessible to and can be invoked by the interlocutors in a given situation. But as the descriptions consulted Bernd Heine and Gunther Kaltenböck 20 suggest, such expectations do not appear to surface as forgrounded functions of DMs and hence do not figure in the survey data presented above. Second, it would seem that with regard to the range of functions covered, there are on the one hand DMs that are largely confined to one component, and on the other hand markers expressing a spectrum of functions, that is, two or more components. A paradigm instance of the former is I gather, which appears to be confined to the AS component according to the description volunteered by Brinton (2008: 226-8). A typical example of the latter can be seen in the DM you see, which is said to involve all three components (Brinton 2008: 134-6). But the clear majority of English DMs are “polyfunctional”, that is, they express functions of more than one component. This finding is in accordance with what has been observed by a number of other authors (e.g., Schleef 2005; Gaines 2011). Third, the data presented also suggest that TO is the component most frequently involved. What this might indicate is that, more than the roles of interlocutors and their interaction, it is the planning and structuring of texts that is the primary concern of speakers when they draw on DMs. At the same time, the rich descriptions that have become available also suggest that designing texts is not a means to an end but rather serves the interlocutors to achieve their communicative goals in what they conceive to be the best way possible. Fourth, that TO constitutes a major or even the only function of DMs has been argued for in a wide range of publications, in accordance with the classic definition of Schiffrin (1987). 7 As the present paper may have shown, however, reducing DMs to functions of TO and ignoring other components of the situation of discourse would not seem to be very helpful. And finally, the data presented also suggest that English DMs do not stand out as being typolologically special in any way. Both the kinds of functions expressed by them and their frequency of use appear to be similar to what can be found in DMs of other European languages and Turkish, as we saw in Section 3.1. In (5) of Section 2.2 we posed the following questions: (a) Are the functions of DMs shaped by the sitution of discourse like other theticals? (b) And if yes, can the study of DMs be of help in understanding the internal structure of the network characterizing the situation of discourse? The findings made in this paper suggest that DMs do not seem to be unusual compared to other kinds of theticals (see Heine et al., 2013): Their functions are not defined with reference to the syntactic or semantic structure of a clause or sentence but rather respond to the frame set by the situation of discourse, like other thetical categories such as formulae of social exchange, vocative expressions, or interjections; accordingly, they have been described as “procedural” (Blakemore 1987), “metalingual” (Maschler 7 Schiffrin (1987: 31) defines discourse markers as “sequentially dependent elements which bracket units of talk”. The Situation of Discourse: Evidence from Discourse Markers 21 1994), “metacommunicative”, “metatextual”, “metapragmatic”, “metadiscursive”, or “instructional” (e.g., Aijmer 1997: 3; Hansen 1998b: 236; Grenoble 2004: 1953; Furkó 2005; Hyland 2005; Auer & Günthner 2005: 340; Frank-Job 2006: 397; Arroyo 2011: 858; see Heine 2013). It would seem in fact that question (a) can be answered in the affirmative. Question (b) raises some problems that need much further investigation. Most of all, findings such as the ones presented here are so far not available for other thetical categories; hence, there is no real basis for comparison. Furthermore, DMs, forming a small set of formulaic theticals, are not representative of theticals as a whole, and the fact that they are largely restricted in their functions to a spectrum of three of the components of the situation of discourse might be due to their relatively advanced stage of grammaticalization. Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank a number of colleagues who in some form or other have been of help in writing this paper, providing many critical comments, most of all to Laurel Brinton, Karin Aijmer, Elizabeth Traugott, Maj- Britt Mosegaard Hansen, and Tania Kuteva, but also to the following: Sasha Aikhenvald, Felix Ameka, Walter Bisang, Ulrike Claudi, Liesbeth Degand, Nicole Dehé, Csilla Ilona Dér, Bob Dixon, Wolfgang Dressler, Jack DuBois, Tom Givón, Martin Haspelmath, Sylvie Hancil, Jack Hawkins, Christa König, Haiping Long, Andrej Malchukov, Britta Mondorf, Aliyah Morgenstern, Maarten Mous, Gábor Nagy, Heiko Narrog, Fritz Newmeyer, Klaus-Uwe Panther, John Joseph Perry, Seongha Rhee, Kyung-An Song, Danjie Su, Arie Verhagen, Barbara Wehr, Björn Wiemer. 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