Review of Sandrine Zufferey and Liesbeth Degand. 2024. Connectives and Discourse Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Connectives and DiscourseRelations (2024) is an insightful and comprehensive examination of the role of connectives in structuring discourse across different languages and genres.The book offers a well-balanced integration of theoretical perspectives and empirical research, making it a valuable resource for scholars in linguistics, cognitive science, and language acquisition.The authors provide a detailed analysis of discourse relations, their explicit and implicit markers, and their cognitive processing.With a broad comparative approach, the book explores cross-linguistic variations and the acquisition of connectives in both first and second languages.The book consists of nine chapters.Chapter 1 introduces the main concepts of the book, namely the notions of discourse relations and connectives and situates them within the more general concepts of discourse cohesion and coherence.Chapter 2 presents the main characteristics of four leading models for discourse annotation.Chapter 3 explores the interface between semantics and pragmatics and analyzes the type of meaning conveyed by connectives.In Chapter 4, the authors study the interface between syntax and discourse in order to investigate the role of syntax in the use of connectives.The authors address the question if the grammatical category of a connective has an influence on its meanings and uses.In chapter 5 an overview of the way discourse connectives emerge in language over time is given with a focus on the diachronically well-documented languages French, Italian and English.The