Abstract: In modern spoken Chinese,a, the independent interjection, functions as a discourse marker, and has evolved into one. Discourse markers embody interactive, emotional, cohesive, and turn-initiating functions, and are phonetically distinct from other discourse components. This paper examines a, the discourse marker, from a pragmatic perspective. Hence, real interactive conversational data are employed to illustrate its distribution at the beginning of turns. Praat, the software of experimental phonetics, is utilized, to analyze the prosodic features of a under different functions. The next step is that its pragmatic roles at the beginning of sentences are summarized. The connection between the prosodic features and pragmatic functions of discourse markers are demonstrated as well. As a result, this study provides an effective tool of phonetic performance for learners of Chinese language and artificial intelligence in learning and recognizing spoken components.