Xeno-markers in the Russian oral speech: debated status of the units

The article examines the features of grammaticalization and pragmaticization of units, which as a result became pragmatic xenomarkers (XM). PMX are special units of oral speech that introduce someone else's (in the broad sense) speech into the discourse. XMs are special units of oral speech that introduce someone else’s (in the broad sense) speech into discourse. Along with “dictionary” particles, they say, materials from oral corpora make it possible to identify other units that have not yet been described by dictionaries and grammars. The XM vocabulary includes more than 20 such units. Despite the status of a pragmatic marker, which does not imply grammatical inflection, some XM have retained their grammatical characteristics (такой/такая/такие and грит/грю). There are also cases of double interpretation of the units ах, вот, типа etc., when the units function as xenomarkers, but are included in the quoted speech. It seems that their prosodic characteristics can act as formal features that make it possible to clarify the specifics of the described units and confirm their pragmaticalized status.