Is Hauptsache a Discourse Marker?
Abstract
The capacity to perform outside the limits of sentence syntax is not restricted to particles. It can also be found in certain words and constructions that fulfill functions that go beyond the limits of the categories to which they belong, such as connection, modalization or information structuring. This paper deals with the matrix clause die Hauptsche ist and, more specifically, with its reduced form Hauptsache. Unlike its homonym, this unit does not contribute to the proposition expressed by the utterance hosting it; rather, it reveals connections and metadiscourse text-level functions. The analysis of a corpus of parliamentary protocols will show how the formal, distributional and functional defining features of discourse markers can be found in Hauptsache and justify its inclusion in this category.
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