A STUDY OF CONTRASTIVE MARKERS IN WRITTEN CHINESE DISCOURSE

• Main Authors: Ling-Ru Chou, 周凌如
• Other Authors: Yu-Fang Wang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2005
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/92392836105300996037

碩士 === 靜宜大學 === 英國語文學系研究所 === 93 === This study explores the use of a set of apparently synonymous contrastive conjunctions in Chinese written discourse: zhishi, buguo, keshi, and danshi. Using Van Dijk’s (1989) notions of ‘local’ and ‘global’ structures to account for the relationship between clauses and the relationship between larger fragments of discourse, I examine their discourse-pragmatic functions. The corpus contains two sets of data: one from reportage articles and another from literary articles. I show that these seemingly synonymous conjunctions differ in several ways. Firstly, among these contrastive markers, danshi is the marker that most frequently occurs in written discourse. Secondly, danshi tends to convey explicit contrast, while buguo and keshi express implicit contrast. Besides, keshi tends to occur in the literary articles. Zhishi is a slight transition.