Supra-Coordinators in Mosuli Arabic

Abstract

Supra-coordinators are items used to connect fragments of discourse to each other so as to construct a unified and coherent discourse. The two related fragments may be uttered by two different participants or by one participant. The presence of the marker indicates the presence of some shared topic (or some relatively related topics) in the two discoursal fragments. The change of the marker, further, may change the relation exhibits between the two related parts affecting in turn the coherence of discourse. More than one factor have been found to be effective in the use of specific marker rather than another. Those factors include: formality, politeness, sex, religion, social status, age, intonation, stress and some pragmalinguistic cues like facial expressions, gestures and head movements. In general, the paper seeks to affirm the claim that supra-coordinators are context–dependent items.