In this chapter, we first sketch a number of assumptions underlying diachronic research in order to understand how researchers sketch the emergence of discourse connectives (and discourse markers) in language. We then review the discussion about the theoretical framework underlying the diachronic evolution of discourse connectives, that is, in which conceptual terms this linguistic process is best accounted for, grammaticalization or pragmaticalization. We then turn to a general description of the evolution from clause combining strategies to coordinating and subordinating connectives. Different case studies are presented in order to illustrate typical and less typical cases of language change in the area of connectives: the semantic evolution from temporal meaning to concessive meaning of French cependant (‘yet’), the peculiar semantic evolution from cause to contrast of Italian però (‘but’) (5.3.2), and a diachronic account of the synchronic polysemy of French alors.

Chapter 3 explores the characteristics of pragmatic markers and focuses on both their function during a particular period and their development over time. Diachronically, pragmatic markers develop from content words, phrases, or clauses that gradually acquire a distinctive syntactic form and discourse-pragmatic functions and follow various pathways, from adverb > conjunction > pragmatic marker, from sentence-internal adverb > sentential adverb > pragmatic marker, from main clause > ambiguous clause > parenthetical, from adverbial or imperative clause > pragmatic marker. A number of examples of such pathways are provided, where it is shown that the historical data may be messy and require nuanced interpretation. For clausal pragmatic markers, the “matrix clause hypothesis” is critically examined. The process of language change that best accounts for the development of pragmatic markers, including lexicalization, pragmaticalization, grammaticalization, and cooptation, is still a matter of debate, though the majority view is that if “grammar” is broadly understood, pragmatic markers are best seen as undergoing grammaticalization (decategorialization, desemanticization).

Changes of social order in societies in remote times up to the present time have had a major impact on the use of address systems and their change, as has language contact due to population movements whether forced or unforced. There are several important factors influencing these changes involving processes of (de)grammaticalization and pragmaticalization. Indeed, there is a series of extra-linguistic variables associated with pronominal address including social position, relative authority, group membership, generation, age, sex, kinship, genealogic distance, mood, social context, and language variety. It is precisely these features which turn second person pronouns into social markers. This chapter has a threefold objective: first, to shed some light on the complex architecture of address systems which Romance languages have developed over time out of their shared Latin heritage; second, to familiarize readers with some of the different kinds of address systems conventionalized in Romance; and, finally, to foreground the processes of language change which led to the great variety of systems present in the post-Latin varieties today.

This chapter is concerned with what we know about the status and the history of discourse markers. The chapter provides a detailed discussion of the various hypotheses that have been proposed to account for the rise of discourse markers. It is argued that none of those hypotheses is entirely satisfactory, pointing out a number of shortcomings characterizing such earlier approaches. The conclusion reached in the chapter is that discourse markers exhibit a catalog of grammatical properties that are hard to explain on the basis of those approaches.