Topic shifters in Romanian: A contrastive analysis

Abstract

The paper focuses on the analysis of topic shifters from a contrastive perspective, using a pragmatic approach based on conversational logic, theories of relevance and coherence/cohesion studies. Discourse markers and topic shifters in French have been widely investigated, and provided a description of the core values and a typology of uses; a comparative perspective is expected to highlight new semantic values, a better understanding of their pragmatic role and even to establish new typologies. As far as Romanian is concerned, the research on topic shifters is still incipient, and the parallel corpora used so far have provided only a small number of equivalents (de asemenea, de altfel, de altminteri, ȋn plus, pe de altă parte). Moreover, the study of the Romanian correspondents of French topic shifters has shown that the same marker often combines two functions, depending on the discursive strategies developed and on the context, which makes its semantic interpretation even more difficult. A systematic investigation aiming at an exhaustive inventory of these markers is therefore motivated, requiring a thorough analysis of different types of corpora (written and oral), involving various discourse types.In order to identify a wider range of topic shifters in Romanian, besides bilingual corpora provided by the Linguee and Reverso online dictionaries, I consulted a number of modern and contemporary translations from French into Romanian, seeking to assign each unit a specific value or sub-type of topic shifting, such as sharing the same argumentative orientation or the introduction of a new perspective on the topic in question, etc.