The prosody-pragmatics interface in the pragmaticalization of <i>¡Hombre!</i> as a discourse marker
The current study, using a mixed methods approach of qualitative discourse analysis and quantitative phonetic analysis based on the framework of interactional prosody (Couper-Kuhlen, 2001; Couper-Kuhlen & Selting, 1996; Selting, 2010), analyzes the pragmaticalized multifunctional discourse marker hombre ‘man’ in Andalusian Spanish. Discourse analyses of 28 sociolinguistic interviews reveals three major discourse functions of hombre. Phonological and phonetic analyses reveal that prosodic cues vary per category, demonstrating that prosody serves as a co-occurring contextualization cue (Gumperz, 1982; Tannen, 1993) in addition to lexical and syntactic cues to signal intended meaning. The study aims to unite discourse and phonetic analysis through interactional prosody in the subfield of variational pragmatics in order to holistically investigate pragmaticalized multifunctional discourse markers.
