“Que bé, tu! (« that’s great, you! »)”
Open Access
- 6 July 2022
- journal article
- Published by John Benjamins Publishing Company in Pragmatics
- Vol. 26 (3), 473-500
- https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.26.3.06bla
Abstract
The Catalan second person singular (2sg) pronoun tu (you) has acquired a wide range of pragmatic values in spoken registers that have received little or no attention from scholars in the field. The aim of the present article is to analyse a particular emerging use of the 2sg pronoun tu from a corpus-based perspective. In the light of Grammaticalisation Theory, it is argued that whereas in some contexts this pronoun maintains all or part of its referential function (e.g. as subject or as a vocative, respectively), in other contexts its use is very similar to that of an emphatic pragmatic marker. Data drawn from three spoken corpora suggest that the pronoun has consolidated this new use. Prosodic evidence is also provided to show the semantic and pragmatic changes undergone by the pronoun.Keywords
This publication has 21 references indexed in Scilit:
- Conversational routines, formulaic language and subjectificationJournal of Pragmatics, 2012
- Person deixis in CatalanPublished by Walter de Gruyter GmbH ,2011
- (Inter)subjectivity and (inter)subjectification: A reassessmentPublished by Walter de Gruyter GmbH ,2010
- Topic Orientation MarkersJournal of Pragmatics, 2009
- Interjections as pragmatic markersJournal of Pragmatics, 2009
- Involvement Vs Detachment: Gender Differences in the Use of Personal Pronouns in Televised Sports in TaiwanDiscourse Studies, 2003
- What are discourse markers?Journal of Pragmatics, 1999
- Interjections: The universal yet neglected part of speechJournal of Pragmatics, 1992
- The multiple uses of the second person singular pronoun ni in conversational MandarinJournal of Pragmatics, 1991
- Impersonal uses of personal pronounsJournal of Pragmatics, 1990