One of the language change processes is pragmaticalization, and among the products of this process are discourse markers.Discourse markers are the language elements that make the discourse homogeneous and do not allow discourse to deviate from its original path.This pap
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One of the language change processes is pragmaticalization, and among the products of this process are discourse markers.Discourse markers are the language elements that make the discourse homogeneous and do not allow discourse to deviate from its original path.This paper aims to investigate the pragmmaticalization of the verb "goftan" (i.e. sayying) in New Persian. In order to investigate more exactly, we have divided New Persian into two separate periods: Early New Persian and Modern Persian.In early New Persian, the verb "goftan" functioned as the main lexical verb in the meanings of "to say" and "to name”, expressed the concept of inductive modality and also participated in impersonal constructions.In Modern Persian, in addition to conserve previous functions, this linguistic element is evolved into a discourse marker through pragmmaticalization.In this new function, "goftan" also appears in two other forms as "migam" and "begu" and functions as initiating discourse, changing the topic, and referring to new information. The token frequency of "migam" is more than "begu".The research data has been extracted from the books written in Early New Persian language, internet, and TV movies.Because discourse markers are mostly found in the spoken variety, the TV movies have been chosen in order to investigate functions of the verb "goftan" as a discourse marker in Modern Persian.
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