Sandrine Zufferey is a professor at the Institute of French Language and Literature, University of Bern, Switzerland. She is the author of two research monographs on the topic of language acquisition and pragmatics, and the co-author of four textbooks. She has also published extensively on the topic of discourse connectives. Liesbeth Degand is a professor at the Institute for Language and Communication, UCLouvain, Belgium. She is an experienced project leader of international research networks in the area of discourse markers. She has published extensively on the categorization of discourse markers as linguistic expressions at the discourse-grammar interface.

‘Zufferey and Degand offer a comprehensive account of discourse relations expressed with and without connectives, one of the hottest - and also controversial - topics in linguistics and psycholinguistics. It is an excellent resource for those interested in discourse processing and comprehension from a both a theoretical and applied perspective.’ Maria-Josep Cuenca, Professor of Catalan Linguistics at the University of València, Spain

• 1. Defining connectives and discourse relations; 2. Theoretical models of discourse relations; 3. Connectives: meanings and functions; 4. Connectives between syntax and discourse; 5. The evolution of connectives' meanings; 6. Processing and understanding discourse relations and connectives; 7. Discourse relations and connectives across languages and genres; 8. Acquiring connectives in a first language; 9. Mastering connectives in a second language; Conclusion.