Discourse markers cross-linguistically

Abstract

The article deals with discourse markers — idiomatic utterances made in response to the interlocutor’s statement in the course of a conversation. The paper introduces and inter-prets discourse formulae formed with propositional verbs with the meaning of agreement and confirmation, disagreement and denial, surprise, indignation. The interest to discourse mark-ers is due to their obviously notable contribution to spoken communication. Also, this kind of items are in most cases language-specific. A variety of discourse markers in several languages is under review, with the focus on their language-specific features. The innovative and rele-vant character of the paper arises from its bearing on the area of semantic typology.