Język. Komunikacja. Informacja, 2012, tom 7

Permanent URI for this collection

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1

Age-specific features of the use of discourse markers in Hungarian
(Wydawnictwo Rys, 2012) Markó, Alexandra; Dér, Ilona Csilla
The acquisition of discourse markers in child’s language development can be interpreted as part of the evolution of (meta)pragmatic awareness, being an indicator of it. The present study examines the frequency, position and function of three Hungarian discourse markers: hát ’well’, így ’so’ and ilyen ’such, like, so’. The material consists of interviews recorded with fifteen 6–7 years old nursery-school children, fifteen 15–16 years old second- ary school students and fifteen adults (aged between 20 and 57 years). The main question of the research is whether the relative frequency and the function of these discourse markers is dependent on the age of the speaker. According to the results all of the analyzed discourse markers appear in all the three age group’s spontaneous speech. Hát is the most frequent marker (all participating teenagers and adults used it, and also 67% of the preschool children), typically in turn-initial position. Így and ilyen occurred most often in the teenagers’ spontaneous speech, in line with our earlier observation that the frequency of így correlates to the speaker’s age. Function of ilyen is similar in every age group’s speech, while így shows a broader set of functions by the age of 15.