Actuellement jako diskurzní částice?

Abstract

The article presents a corpus-based study of potential discourse functions of the French adverb actuellement similar to those of the English adverb actually. Despite their common etymological origins nowadays these two adverbs have different meanings. While the available literature assigns only the functions of a temporal adverbial to the French actuellement, the English actually has developed functions of an adversative or elaborative discourse marker in addition to those of a disjunct and subjunct. Nonetheless, some of the occurrences of actuellement attested in synchronic monolingual corpora (Lextutor-Parlé and Araneum Francogallicum Minus) suggest that the French adverb may also perform contrastive discourse functions, in particular in connection with the conjunction mais. Actuellement may also serve to introduce a new topic, even though this discourse-organizing function is represented only marginally in the corpora.