Discourse markers: what are they and where do they come from? (original) (raw)

2024, Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen & Jacqueline Visconti, eds. "Manual of Discourse Markers in Romance", pp. 3-28. (Manuals of Romance Linguistics, vol. 37, Berlin: De Gruyter)

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110711202-001

In this editors’ introduction to the volume, we first seek to briefly place the study of discourse markers within the study of (Romance) linguistics more broadly, outlining some of the ways in which Romance linguists have been at the forefront of research in this field (§1). We then sketch the definition of DMs that we have been assuming as volume editors in §2. In the central §3, we give a more in-depth overview of the current state of the art regarding the diachronic rise of DMs, focusing in particular on the notion of (inter)subjectification and on the competing models that have been proposed to explain the evolution of markers, i.e. grammaticalization, pragmaticalization, constructionalization, and cooptation. Finally, §4 provides a rationale for the structure of the Manual along with summaries of the individual chapters.