Ganeshan Presents at 2019 Hispanic Linguistics Symposium

Dr. Ashwini Ganeshan at the 2019 Hispanic Linguistics Symposium

Dr. Ashwini Ganeshan, Assistant Professor of Spanish in Modern Languages at Ohio University, presented a pragmatics research paper at the 2019 Hispanic Linguistics Symposium in El Paso, Texas, Oct. 24–26.

The paper titled “Las funciones del marcador discursivo uruguayo tá: una primera aproximación pragmática” (“The functions of the Uruguayan discourse marker tá”) presents the preliminary results of ongoing research being conducted by Ganeshan and her collaborator Genoveva Di Maggio, an alumna of Ohio University and currently a doctoral student at Indiana University.

Using data from sociolinguistic interviews, Ganeshan and Di Maggio identify different variants of the discourse marker tá and assign semantic, pragmatic, and textual functions to each variant.

The paper contributes to research on variational pragmatics in Spanish and has implications on the categorization of functions of discourse markers across languages within the field of theoretical pragmatics and discourse analysis.

Work on this research project and presentation at a national venue have been possible due to continued support received through the Ohio University College of Arts and Sciences Humanities Research Fund.