Abstract
The paper focuses on the description and delimitation of discourse connectives, i.e. linguistic expressions significantly contributing to text coherence and generally helping the reader to better understand semantic relations within a text. The paper discusses the historical origin of discourse connectives viewed from the perspective of present-day linguistics.
Its aim is to define present-day discourse connectives according to their historical origin through which we see what is happening in discourse in contemporary language. The paper analyzes the historical origin of the most frequent connectives in Czech, English and German (which could be useful for more accurate translations of connectives in these languages) and point out that they underwent a similar process to gain a status of present-day discourse connectives.
The paper argues that this historical origin or process of rising discourse connectives might be language universal. Finally, the paper demonstrates how these observations may be help