Grammaticalization and persistence phenomena in two hybrid discourse markers - <i>la preuve</i> and <i>regarde</i>

<i>La preuve</i> and <i>regarde</i> are two discourse markers that have undergone a grammaticalization process. As a consequence of this process they have partly lost their lexical value and have acquired a rhetorical one. The latter makes them function as connectives that can mark a justification relation. We shall see that in spite of this newly acquired discourse value, these two forms have preserved the perceptual aspect of their original meaning: la preuve by recalling a fact that is likely to be materialized in the sense of ‘montré’ (‘shown’), regarde by recalling a state of affairs which is likely to be assessed by the addressee. The co-existence of these values is a result of the persistence phenomena that may affect grammaticalized items..