The Use of Perspective Markers and Connectives in Expressing Subjectivity: Evidence from Collocational Analyses

Yipu Wei, Jacqueline Evers-Vermeul, Ted J.M. Sanders


Abstract
This study explores how subjectivity is expressed in coherence relations, by means of a distinctive collocational analysis on two Chinese causal connectives: the specific subjective kejian ‘so’, used in subjective argument-claim relations, and the underspecified suoyi ‘so’, which can be used in both subjective argument-claim and objective cause-consequence relations. On the basis of both Horn’s pragmatic Relation and Quality principles and the Uniform Information Density Theory, we hypothesized that the presence of other linguistic elements expressing subjectivity in a discourse segment should be related the degree of subjectivity encoded by the connective. In line with this hypothesis, the association scores showed that suoyi is more frequently combined with perspective markers expressing epistemic stance: cognition verbs and modal verbs. Kejian, which already expresses epistemic stance, co-occurred more often with perspective markers related to attitudinal stance, such as markers of expectedness and importance. The paper also pays attention to similarities and differences in collocation patterns across contexts and genres.
Anthology ID:
2020.dnd-11.7
Volume:
Dialogue Discourse Volume 11
Month:
March
Year:
2020
Address:
Chicago, Illinois, USA
Editors:
Massimo Poesio, Manfred Stede, Amanda Stent, Jonathan Ginzburg, Vera Demberg, Amir Zeldes
Venue:
DND
SIG:
SIGDIAL
Publisher:
University of Illinois Chicago
Note:
Pages:
62–88
Language:
URL:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-dnd/2020.dnd-11.7/
DOI:
10.5087/dad.2020.103
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Yipu Wei, Jacqueline Evers-Vermeul, and Ted J.M. Sanders. 2020. The Use of Perspective Markers and Connectives in Expressing Subjectivity: Evidence from Collocational Analyses. Dialogue & Discourse, 11:62–88.
Cite (Informal):
The Use of Perspective Markers and Connectives in Expressing Subjectivity: Evidence from Collocational Analyses (Wei et al., DND 2020)
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PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-dnd/2020.dnd-11.7.pdf