Discourse Markers in Magahi

Abstract

The article describes discourse markers (DMs) in Magahi, an Indo-Aryan language. The focus is on semantic, syntactic, phonetic aspects as well as how the DMs are rooted in socio-cultural space in Magahi. DMs contribute significant meaning to an utterance interpretation in Magahi. Their meanings vary from being additive, agreement, contrast. They are indicator of cause and effect, surprise. They may contribute to the property of interrogation, act as politeness or inspiring particle. They may be exclamatory in nature or act as exemplifiers. They act as fillers. Their function changes with change in intonation. Syntactically, they are multicategorial in nature. Socio-linguistically, they are pervasive over whole Magahi-speaking community. Since Hindi is the language next to Magahi, spoken by the natives, so, some of them are affected by Hindi and easily percolate to the Hindi spoken by natives resulting into code-mixing.