Abstract

This paper considers the use of the connectives "dunque" and "tuttavia" in presentday Italian newspapers and non-fiction writing. Using a corpus-based methodology, we aim to evaluate how and to what extent the syntactic distribution and punctuation accompanying dunque and tuttavia affect the meaning of the connectives, and in particular the discourse relation they convey (consecution and reformulation in the case of dunque, direct and indirect concession in the case of tuttavia). The analysis also offers some (mostly unexpected) quantitative data on the distributional tendencies and on the actual combinations with punctuation of the two connectives.