Discourse Relations Versus Discourse Marker Relations

While it seems intuitively obvious tha t many discourse markers (DMs) are able to express discourse relat ions (DRs) which ex i s t independently, the specific contr ibut ion of DMs if any is not clear. In this paper , we investigate the s tatus of some consequence DMs in French. We observe tha t it is difficult to cons t ruc t a clear and simple definition based on DRs for these DMs. Next , we show tha t the lexical constraints associated with such DMs extend far beyond simple compat ibi l i ty with DRs. This suggests t ha t the view of DMs as signaling general al lpurpose DRs is to be seriously amended in favor of more precise descriptions of DMs, in which the compat ibi l i ty with DRs is derived from a lexical semantic profile.