Discourse-pragmatic markers of (inter)subjective stance in Asian languages

This special issue is concerned with languages belonging to the Sinosphere, a region where China played an important geo-political and cultural leadership role. It aims to trace areal effects that the impact of Chinese had on the languages of the region over centuries. It deals with a number of words of Chinese origin used in Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and Thai, as well as Chinese and investigates theoretically significant issues related to language contact, discourse-pragmatic aspects of language change, and socio-cultural influence on language development, among others, as exemplified in the development of discourse markers from their earlier lexical expressions originating from Chinese etyma. The nine contributions presented in this special issue have a number of things in common, in particular the following. First, they deal in some way or other with areal effects that the impact of Chinese had on these languages over centuries. Second, their goal is to achieve linguistic reconstruction, tracing present-day patterns of language use back to earlier states of language use. Third, linguistic reconstruction is restricted to linguistic material that was responsible for the rise and development of new patterns of discourse organization. Fourth, the tool most commonly employed for achieving reconstructions is grammaticalization theory. And finally, a central concern of the authors contributing to this special issue is with understanding the role played by discourse markers in linguistic development - how they arose and developed into what they are today. This special issue demonstrates that the languages figuring in it have received substantial influence from Chinese through written texts.