Nouvelles perspectives dans l’analyse des marqueurs discursifs

The aims of this paper are to present some issues outstanding in research on discourse markers and to establish some methodological bases that could lead to their resolution. The following aspects of discourse markers are addressed: the type of words they stem from, their structural scope and the relationships they establish, the type of meaning they convey and their meaning in context, the discourse functions these units perform and, finally, the criteria that can adequately explain the existing evolution process.