Corpus-driven approach to discourse markers and topicality: The Mandarin marker nà 那

This study demonstrates the potential of corpus methods in analyzing the interactions between discourse and sentence Topics in utterances connected by the Mandarin discourse marker (DM) nà 那 ‘so, in that case’. While previous research has acknowledged na’s ability to intervene on topicality, its analysis has been hindered by an overlap between discourse and sentence levels and a lack of rigorous classification criteria. To address these issues, we examined 263 occurrences of na in 13 spontaneous telephone conversations between Mandarin native speakers. Data were annotated for the level of operation (discourse/interactional), function, and sentence Topic type. Statistical results show that na plays a multifaceted role in discourse, most notably contributing to the dynamic organization of macro- and micro-structural elements in communication.