Connectives

Abstract Connectives can be studied both as functional sentence elements and as elements of a textual or discourse grammar. The textual dimension introduced by text linguistics and discourse analysis has certainly intensified interest in their role. Attention is paid to the multifunctionality of connectives and to their independence from specific grammatical categories: connectives are seen as relational and organizational units, acting as instructions for the reader/hearer in many cognitive or semantic approaches. The study of connectors has been characterized by great terminological instability and by an emphasis on the complexity of the relations of these elements of textual grammar in the rapidly developing fields of semantics and pragmatics. Studies of connectives have often highlighted the problems of distinguishing semantic from pragmatic meaning in their use and attempts to arrive at a functional typology have been accompanied by an awareness that categories may be overlapping. The textual viewpoint developed by text linguistics and discourse analysis has rapidly inspired a wider range of different applied perspectives that can offer new insights into connectives. These include the following: discourse processing, argumentation, corpus‐based studies on variation and change, cross‐linguistic analysis, translation studies, studies on non‐native speakers, and learner corpora.