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Article In: Comparing Constructions in Romance and Germanic Languages
Edited by Carmen Mellado Blanco and Pedro Ivorra Ordines
[Languages in Contrast 26:2] 2026
► pp. 344–369

From temporal meaning to relevance-oriented discourse function

A cross-linguistic study of discourse markers

 | University of Milan, Italy
 | Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia
 | Stockholm University, Sweden
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
Abstract
The aim of the present article is to contribute to the understanding of the process of pragmaticalization. We analyze discourse markers of the after all type in Russian, English, German, Swedish, and Italian. Previous research has shown that temporal adverbials may develop discursive meanings such as concessive and justificatory functions. The present study examines their potential to acquire an additional pragmatic value. Specifically, these markers may not only introduce the result of a line of reasoning, but also express the speaker’s evaluation of that result as the most relevant or optimal one. We refer to this development as the relevance-oriented function. Drawing on parallel corpora as well as language-specific corpora, we investigate the extent to which this pragmaticalization process is attested across languages. The analysis shows that while English, German, Russian, and Italian display relatively advanced stages of discourse-marker use, Swedish exhibits a more conservative pattern. More generally, the cross-linguistic comparison suggests that the universal aspect of this process lies not in uniform outcomes, but in the direction of change itself.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Pragmaticalization and the emergence of the relevance-oriented function
  • 3.Discourse markers of after all type across languages
    • 3.1Russian v konce koncov
    • 3.2English after all
    • 3.3German letzten Endes and letztendlich
    • 3.4Swedish till slut and till sist
    • 3.5Italian dopotutto and in fin dei conti
    • 3.6Cross-linguistic comparison
  • 4.Conclusions
  • Author statement
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Author queries
  • References
References (42)
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