| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 英語學系 === 100 === This thesis explores six TREs in TSM and their various functions in TSM conversation. The discourse-pragmatic functions are categorized into three: truth-describing, expressive, and interactive. Truth-describing TREs are employed to assert an event or a fact, make a contrast with an unreal scenario, justify the speaker's claim, and negate any doubts from the listener toward the statement made earlier. In contrast to descriptive TREs' truth-reporting function, expressive TREs are used to express subjective and evaluative meanings. The truth-value of the proposition can not be verified from the discourse. They serve emphasizer, upgrading, exasperation, and concessive functions. Emphasizer TREs are used to strengthen the force of the predicate. Upgrading TREs elevate the degree of the gradable predicate. Expressive TREs can express a person's exasperation such as sit-chai u-iann. What's more, collocating with limiting marker toh and comparative khah, TREs do not boost the meaning; instead, they become a way of showing concession. Interactive TREs can serve as a responsive token or a prefacing device. A free-standing TREs plus a UFP can especially be used as a responsive token. They are used to express emotions such as surprise or unexpectedness or express agreement. When a TRE collocating with a verb of saying kong, it serves like a hedge, prefacing a statement containing counter-expectedness of the interlocutor.
TREs in TSM, similar to TREs in English and Mandarin Chinese, are more than truth-related or emphasizing meanings. They themselves become an evaluation. TREs in TSM has developed with more versatility due to less syntactic constraints, which deserve further investigation.
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