Abstract

The opening pages of Leo Spitzer's Italienische Umgangssprache call for a reading of the volume in a pragmatics-based perspective. This paper focuses on Spitzer's considerations in the field of discourse markers, and more precisely of connectives. The questions to be answered are the following: is Spitzer's insight into the functioning of discourse markers one more way to anticipate the theories of pragmatics? Which specific phenomena in the field of pragmatics among those now considered to be well known did he foresee? Finally, to what extent was Spitzer able to find a common factor connecting these phenomena? Through a careful reading of Spitzer's text the paper shows the consistency of its analysis and points out some crucial parameters which reveal its strong pragmatic character.