Analysing Discourse Markers in Spoken Corpora: Actually as a Case Study

We cannot discuss spoken language without taking into account discourse markers.1 Discourse markers are lexical items such as well, I think, you mean, actually of course, so, in fact. Moder and Martinovic-Zic (2004: 117) describe them as being largely syntax-independent and their use does not change the truth-conditional meaning of a sentence, while Swan (2005: xviii) writes that they show a connection between what is said and the wider context. Below is an example showing the context in which several discourse markers (underlined) have been used: