Discourse connective

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In linguistics, a discourse connective is a word or phrase like "therefore" or "in other words" that links parts of a discourse and shows their relationship.

Common English language discourse connectives indicate that the upcoming text adds more information ("moreover"), contrasts with previous information ("however"), provides clarification or illustration ("for instance"), has a cause-and-effect relation ("as a result"), and a variety of other meanings.

Discourse connectives probably exist in all languages. A typical language may have an inventory of a few hundred.