This paper investigates three lexical items, vaa(n) in Finnish, bara in Swedish and seulement in French, from a comparative perspective. The aim is to explore the semantic identity of these units and their functions as discourse markers (DM). The focus is on three discourse contexts: imperative utterances, sequences where discourse takes a new direction and passages representing narrative highpoints. Each of the three DMs construes in its way the discourse status of the sequence p. With its core meaning entailing the notions of resistance and firmness, vaa(n) produces a zooming effect on the sequence p and rules out the impact of an opposing force; bara, which is etymologically related to the meaning “bare”, has the function of bringing to light the sequence p that is concealed by some contextual factor; seulement endows the sequence p with a negative value that acts retrospectively on a preceding discourse orientation.