Abstract

This study attempts to investigate the procedural functions of the discourse marker أي "أي"(yeah) used in the daily conversation of Syriac discourse. It is assumed that this discourse marker has many procedural functions that help to constrain the context relevance of both the speaker's and the hearer’s assumptions. The constraining is achieved by deriving one of the contextual effects: contextual implication, strengthening, and contradiction, or by reorienting the recipient to a path in the given context that leads to these effects. The study tries to prove that the procedural encoding of this discourse marker in Syriac is necessary to conceptualize the utterance context to achieve the speaker's intended meaning. The data examples, selected from a play performed in the Syriac language, are transliterated, translated, and then analyzed within the relevance theory, concerning the procedural functions of the involved discourse marker. The results of this study showed that the procedural role of the discourse marker أي "ee"(yeah)    in Syriac discourse is very significant in the interpretation of the intended meaning. In light of the findings, the study displays some recommendations to researchers interested in this field of research.