A pilot study of Hungarian discourse markers

This study is the first attempt at detecting formal and positional characteristics of single-word simple discourse markers in a spontaneous speech sample of Hungarian. In the first part of the research, theoretical claims made in the relevant literature were tested. The data did not confirm or only partially confirmed the claims that Hungarian discourse markers (i) occur in turn-initial position and (ii) are prosodically independent, that is, are flanked by a pause on either side. In the second part, we looked at word forms both occurring as discourse markers and having syntactic functions in order to determine the features and cues which help us during speech perception to identify and distinguish between syntactic and discourse marking functions. The points of analysis were as follows: the position of the given word form in the clause, the degree of lenition in its articulation, the duration of the word form, the modulation of fundamental frequency, and the occurrence of sentence stress, if any, on the word form at hand. The results show that one or the other, or some combination, of these various factors may play a role in the perception process in certain instances only; this suggests that other parameters, yet to be explored, are also involved in the identification of these functions.