From markers to marking in discourse

The category of discourse marker (DM) has been applied in diverse senses and theoretical perspectives in Hispanic linguistics that make impossible to find a term including all kind of phenomena classified as discourse markers. The hypothesis of this paper is that this diversity is vinculated to a methodological perspective where most of the work is based on studying the function of each marker, rather than analyzing the slots where discourse markers operate, including other kinds of constructions that are not always grammaticalized. On this base, the paper proposes the category of discourse marking as a macrofunction that can be subcategorized in different marking functions, rather than the perspective of describing units on the basis of other marking functions that are not fixed and grammaticalized. Adapted from the source document