Der Phraseoreflex Gott weiß als Diskursmarker im Deutschen: semantische und pragmatische Merkmale

The paper explores the loss of the religious connotations of the German phraseoreflex Gott weiß as a discourse marker with a low degree of idiomaticity. His religious connotation is partly shaded as a result of the discursive secularization, and the German phraseological unit Gott weiß became a discourse marker with distinct semantic and pragmatic meaning. Discourse markers are assertive utterances, exclamations which typically large than a word and modify linguistic actions. The discourse marker Gott weiß is the result of diachronic processes, such as grammaticalization and pragmaticalization. It functions in two ways: as a conversationally important operator and as a marker that can modify or link together speech acts. The phraseoreflex Gott weiß is a discourse marker for the expression of uncertainty, insecurity or affirmation. The ambiguity of the German phraseoreflex Gott weiß is combined with distributive elements: the semantics and pragmatics of Gott weiß change depending on the type of the subordinate clause as their syntactic complement such as constructions with ob-clauses or the so-called w-clauses or object dass-clauses. The German phraseoreflex Gott weiß is examined in 100 contexts.