Emergence of Discourse Markers of Interaction Management in Korean, Thai, and English: Grammaticalization and Discourse-Cognitive Perspectives

This study analyzed discourse markers (DMs) in Korean, Thai, and English that are used in the domain of interaction management, carrying the functions of discourse initiation, attention attraction, pause filling, and discourse closure. Drawing upon corpus data, inventories of DMs were taken and their functions were identified. Based on these inventories, this study performed a macroscopic investigation of source characteristics, discourse-pragmatic strategies, typological and idiosyncratic influences, and the conceptual-functional network among the notions involved in the grammaticalization of DMs in the interaction management domain. Thai is particularly notable in terms of its numerosity and polyfunctionality compared to Korean and English. This characteristic is attributed to the typological and idiosyncratic characteristics of the morphosyntax and strategies deployed in lexicalization and grammaticalization in Thai.