Grammaticalization and persistence phenomena in two hybrid discourse markers - la preuve and regarde

La preuve and regarde 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 'montre' ('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.