Par ailleurs en français et ses équivalents en anglais

International audienceIn this study we analyse the semantic values and informational role of the French discourse marker "par ailleurs" and its main equivalents in English. Although the French marker has no generally accepted standard translation in English, our hypothesis is that the contrastive focus can serve as a heuristic to help identify the core values of "par ailleurs" and to better understand its potential role in signalling topic shifts. Through the analysis of translation corpora based on contemporary French, we analyse a number of parameters, including sentence position, the presence of other markers in the context, the existence of a topic shift, and recourse or not to an English translation of the marker (on the other hand, while, but, at the same time, apart from this, however, again, for this reason, meanwhile, in addition, additionally, moreover, also, furthermore, and). We also consult the diachronic corpora COHA and HANSARD in order to compare the development of the main English markers used as translations (in decades over a two-century period). This allows us to shed further light on the relative frequencies and evolution of the categories of markers used as translations for the French ter