This study investigates a discourse-pragmatic use of the word wait in spoken North American English. This function is an extension from an original lexical meaning of pausing or lingering which has extended to indicate a pause in discourse as a speaker reflects on or corrects an earlier topic. Over 340 examples from 211 individuals permit comparative sociolinguistic methods and statistical modelling in order to offer an early assessment of the variation among alternates of this innovative use and to test for broad social and linguistic factors in order to understand the underlying processes. The results expose notable recent developments: older people use longer, more temporally specified variants, wait a minute/wait a second, while wait alone is increasing in apparent time with women leading its advance. The robust increase in use of wait alone, e.g. “I haven’t seen her yet. No wait. Yes, I have”, co-occurrence with other markers, e.g. no, and the function of self-correction/commentary arises after 1970. The unique contribution of socially stratified corpora also demonstrates that this development follows well-known principles of linguistic change as wait develops from a verb with temporal specification to a full-fledged discourse-pragmatic marker on the left periphery. “…markers allow speakers to construct and integrate multiple planes and dimensions of an emergent reality” (Schiffrin 1987:330)

中文翻译：

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等等，这是一个话语标记

本研究调查了北美英语口语中wait这个词的语用语用用法。该功能是对暂停或逗留的原始词汇含义的扩展，该含义已扩展为表示说话者在反思或纠正较早的主题时话语中的暂停。来自 211 个人的 340 多个示例允许比较社会语言学方法和统计建模，以便对这种创新用途的替代品之间的差异进行早期评估，并测试广泛的社会和语言因素以了解基本过程。结果揭示了最近的显着发展：老年人使用更长、更临时指定的变体，等待一分钟/等待一秒钟，而单独等待的时间明显增加，女性领先。单独使用等待的强劲增长，例如“我还没见过她。不用等。是的，我有”，与其他标记共现，例如否，并且自校正/评论的功能出现在 1970 年之后。社会分层语料库的独特贡献也表明，这种发展遵循众所周知的语言变化原则：等待从具有时间规范的动词发展为左边缘的成熟语篇语用标记。“……标记允许说话者构建和整合新兴现实的多个平面和维度”（Schiffrin 1987:330）社会分层语料库的独特贡献也表明，这种发展遵循众所周知的语言变化原则，因为等待从具有时间规范的动词发展为左侧边缘的成熟语篇语用标记。“……标记允许说话者构建和整合新兴现实的多个平面和维度”（Schiffrin 1987:330）社会分层语料库的独特贡献也表明，这种发展遵循众所周知的语言变化原则，因为等待从具有时间规范的动词发展为左边缘的成熟语篇语用标记。“……标记允许说话者构建和整合新兴现实的多个平面和维度”（Schiffrin 1987:330）