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Abstract

Abstract

This paper identifies and as emerging discourse markers in American English, based on data from the and the . Both discourse markers started to appear around the middle of the 20th century but differ in their discourse functions and development. is used for cancelling implicatures, expressing emphasis, indicating topic shift or specifying a preceding utterance. () , on the other hand, signals an unexpected, yet relevant piece of information. In terms of their development, only has so far managed to gain a firm foothold in terms of frequency, exhibiting also a high degree of productivity in the form of a whole family of related discourse marker uses (e.g. ). Both discourse markers are identified as resulting from cooptation, but with different degrees of subsequent grammaticalization. The less successful development of () is attributed to the prior existence of a functional competitor, viz. and possibly its different source construction, viz. a matrix rather than an adverbial clause.

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2025-04-04
2025-04-25

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/content/journals/10.1075/fol.23016.kal
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Discourse markers in the making
John Benjamins ; https://doi.org/10.1075/fol.23016.kal
/content/journals/10.1075/fol.23016.kal
/content/journals/10.1075/fol.23016.kal
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keywords: just so ; cooptation ; discourse grammar ; discourse marker ; grammaticalization

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