A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE ...

(18) Spanish ya (Koike 1996:275-276)
a) Y luego en Chiapas … en la … estabamos en la … ¿cómo se llama? En la
sierra, ¿sí?
b) Todo era al revés.
c) Los refrescos eran calientes, ?sí?
d) Las tortillas eran frías.
e) O sea, todo al revés ya.
f) No, llegaba el momento en que ya no podíamos nosotros.
a) ‘And then in Chiapas … in the … we were in the … what o you call it? In the
mountains, yes?
b) Everything was backwards.
c) The soft drinks were hot, yes?
d) The tortillas were cold.
e) That is, everything backwards.
f) No, the time was coming that we couldn’t [take it] any more.’
In this short narrative, the proposition todo al revés ‘everything was backwards’ is
repeated twice (both tokens underlined for clarity), first in (18b), and then again in (18e)
where it is followed by ya. According to Koike, discourse marker ya in (18e) serves to
highlight it preceding phrase todo al revés, giving it an emotional emphasis, while also
serving as a cohesive element by making reference to the first occurrence of the same
phrase in (18b) todo era al revés.
While many discourse markers in the cross-linguistic literature contain markers
which show textual functions, and those which show interpersonal ones, the Spanish
examples above suggest that some discourse markers may indeed contribute textual and
interpersonal functions simultaneously. Though these types of discourse markers appear
to be rare (or maybe just unnoticed), our definition of discourse markers must be broad
enough to include such markers.
51