Discourse markers vs other types of pragmatic markers

This chapter proposes a principled distinction between discourse markers, cohesive devices that stress intra-discourse relations, and pragmatic markers, functional items that have interactional and (inter)subjective meanings. Well aware of the challenge that defining and delimiting such elusive entities entails, we first offer a synthesis of the features shared between the two categories of markers by focusing on their shared properties, with a view to providing an introductory picture of Romance discourse and pragmatic markers. The chapter then seeks to regroup the main classifications found in the Romance pragmatic literature and argue for a prototype-based approach. Lastly, the picture is enhanced by adding a further parameter for distinguishing discourse marking functions from pragmatic marking functions, namely their developmental behavior – a criterion that encompasses not only their functional properties in language use, but also their different behavior in language change.