DISCOURSE MARKER USE REGARDING AGE FACTOR: THE CASE OF MONGOLIAN SPOKEN DISCOURSE
DISCOURSE MARKER USE REGARDING AGE FACTOR: THE CASE OF MONGOLIAN SPOKEN DISCOURSE

Summary/Abstract: The present paper focuses on the age differences in the use of discourse markers (DMs), especially the most common ones, in Mongolian spontaneous speech. Even though DMs are typical of any spoken utterance, it is sometimes argued that young people make excessive use of DMs due to their lexical poverty. Thus, this paper evaluates this claim by analyzing the use of DMs by several age groups both quantitatively and qualitatively in terms of frequency, distribution, and choice. According to the study, all possible DMs were used more frequently by the younger group compared to the other two groups. The percentage of the DMs used by the older speakers was 13.7% (13081) out of the total of 95485 tokens, while the frequency of the DMs used by the middle-aged participants was 15.5% (14214) out of the total of 91706 tokens, and the frequency of the DMs used by the younger participants was 18.6% (16288) out of the total of 87570 tokens. The results of the study confirm that the younger speakers use more fillers, false starts, repetitions, and hesitation markers than the older speakers. Additionally, the percentage of the DMs in their whole lexicon might also support the hypothesis. Moreover, it has been revealed that the younger speakers use new variants of DMs more often. Thus, it can be deduced that young people might influence language change. One interesting finding is that the most common DMs are used differently by each age group in terms of their frequency, variation, and function. Tegeed is the most frequent DM amongst the younger speakers, whereas odoo is the most frequent DM amongst the older speakers, and bol is the most frequent DM amongst the middle-aged speakers.

• Details
• Contents