A Study on Singaporean's Discourse Markers: The case of hor, meh, lah
Bhark Gwang-gyu. 2016. “A Study on Singaporean's Discourse Markers: The case of hor, meh, lah”. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 24(1). 115~147. This study aims to show the characteristic and use aspect of Singaporean's discourse markers such as ‘hor, mah, lah'. This study analyzes features in each type based on gender, generation, occupation, religion, race, educational background through an internet questionnaire survey. The conclusion is presented below. First, Singaporean's discourse markers are used at end of the sentences. Second, Singaporean's discourse markers and Chinese discourse marker(‘哈[ha]’) are used not only oral conversation but also in written conversation. Third, the ‘哈[ha]’ which lexicon is used as discourse marker by chinese in china is grammatized. Forth, There are not much differences based on occupation, race, educational background in the use of discourse makers. However women use discourse markers more than men and young generation use discourse markers more than old generation. Also the buddhist were found to use discourse markers more than the christian and the Roman catholic.