Une analyse contrastive de ‘donc’

Abstract

In this paper we analyze the French connective "donc" by comparing it with its most frequent Norwegian equivalents, "altså", "så" and "derfor". We present "donc"’s functions as both a connective and a discourse marker. Our results show that the notion of “mutual manifestness” covers all the occurrences of "donc" in the corpus, whereas it is not valid for "altså" and "så" as discourse markers. A third of the occurrences of "donc" in the corpus have no Norwegian equivalent in the corresponding source or target text. This might reflect that connectives are not always essential to coherence and the argumentation structure, and that both connectives and discourse markers are highly context sensitive.