Abstract
In this paper, I illustrate an approach to linguistic analysis that uses information about the communicative situation to understand the functioning of linguistic units. The aim is to show how data that would be classified as language-external in the Saussurian tradition can aid in or even be indispensable to the functional analysis of certain units. This is particularly true, as I argue, for what I call restituteurs d'ensemble par inference (REPI) like et tout (ça), nanana, and et caetera… Specifically, this paper investigates to what extent the theoretical and methodological frameworks underlying the design of the OFROM and MPF corpora agree with an approach to language that places speakers in interaction at the initial stage of the analysis.