Discourse Markers and Other Discourse Marking Mechanisms: A Holistic Approach for the Analysis of Oral Narratives in Spanish as a Foreign Language.

The analysis of discourse markers in oral narratives of Spanish as a foreign language speakers faces the obstacle of the absence of definitions and classifications that cover all the relevant elements in discourse marking. The aim of this article is to present a comprehensive proposal for analyzing discourse marking mechanisms (DMMs) applicable to unplanned oral narratives by L2 Spanish learners. This proposal is structured around functions and types of mechanisms. From a functional point of view, the proposal starts with the macro-function of "discourse marking," which is further broken down into three functions: (i) ideational/propositional (such as addition, contrast, cause, etc.), (ii) textual/structural (such as initiation, planning pause, reformulation, etc.), and (iii) interpersonal/modal (such as phatic, doubt, justification, etc.). Regarding the types of mechanisms, this proposal includes both those traditionally considered discourse markers and other types of mechanisms, which, based on their syntactic and discourse behavior, are subdivided into sentential mechanisms (connectors, adjuncts, constituent modifiers) and discourse mechanisms (lexical formulas, generalizing appendices, interjections). This analytical system is applied to a sample of oral narratives produced by native speakers and learners of Spanish as a foreign language.