Operators in process is the name given to constructions that are on the way to becoming discursive operators. In the statement they express a procedural content referring to saying, the modality, the structure of the information or the argumentation. They correspond to a type of "discourse markers", to the so-called comment clauses by Brinton (2008). 0Sometimes they are phrases, subordinate sentences or even free sentences that initiate a grammaticalization process and coexist together with their use as integrated elements in the sentence. Pragmaticalization, grammaticalization, discursivization, constructionalization, cooptation are some of the proposals to explain this process of creation of new forms that the speaker needs to express his/her point of view and his/her relations with the receiver. To argue, to convince, to qualify his assertion, to give him/her the appropriate degree of strength to be able to impose oneself on the other require processes of change within the grammatical construction. 0The research project "From peripheral constructions to discursive operators" opt for a macrosyntactic approach, since these processes not only involve the development of new procedural contents and new "discursive uses", but imply new syntactic structures and categories that demand answers within the grammar.0Key words: discourse markers, grammaticalization, macrosyntax, argumentation, formulation.
