Alors and donc in spoken French: A reanalysis

This paper presents a new analysis of the common French discourse markers alors and donc. After a methodological/theoretical introduction, in which I propose, among other things, a definition of the class of discourse markers, I go on to consider the distribution and semantics of the two particles, mainly in contemporary spoken French, but with some consideration of their diachronic origins and evolution. While a unified semantic account is given for donc, I suggest that alors, which is clearly multifunctional, may usefully be seen as a radial category.