De l’adverbe de manière au marqueur discursif : le cas de autrement

Abstract

The present research focuses on the French adverb autrement, which is characterized by a wide range of uses. This allows it to function not only as an adverb of manner that modifies the verb, but also as a discourse marker that the speaker employs to connect two fragments of discourse in the case of a thematic break. After an overview of the different uses of autrement, we demonstrate that its emergence as a discourse marker has been facilitated by its core meaning. We then examine the link between the different semanticoreferential values of autrement and the adjective autre, to which the adverb is morphologically related. This reveals that the anaphoric character of the adjective is crucial to explaining the potential of autrement to function as a discourse marker.

Keywords

• autrement
• adverb
• connective
• grammaticalization
• discourse marker
• autre
• adjective