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Defective Connective Constructions: Some Cases in Catalan and Spanish

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Abstract

Connectives typically relate two content units. However, corpus analysis shows several variants of the general connective construction (i.e., “S1 Cn S2”), in which one of either segment 1 (S1) or segment 2 (S2) is optional or missing. The aim of this paper is to shed some light on the description of some variants of the connective construction where the connective is not followed by any explicit S2 or S2 is optional. These constructions are complete utterances but they can be considered defective constructions, since one of the slots of the prototypical construction does not include any linguistic material. The analysis focuses on corpus examples including a refutation marker where S2 is implicit, a case that is especially productive and varied in Catalan and in Spanish. Three defective constructions are identified, namely, (i) truncated constructions, (ii) embedded uses of a connective and (ii) reactive constructions. The data show that these defective connective constructions differ as for syntax, prosody, semantics and pragmatics. In monologic contexts, when the second segment is missing in the syntactic and prosodic unit considered, the connective is syntactically and prosodically related to S1. The connective can be located at the right-periphery of S1 (truncated construction) or at S1 middle field (embedded use of a connective). In dialogic contexts, the connective can act as a response to a previous turn and S2 can be either present or absent (reactive constructions). The different configurations match different intonation contours and pause patterns. In all cases, the connective weakens its connective function and adds a modal load, related to (inter)subjectification and intensification. This can be represented as a cline from discourse marking to modal marking.

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Adapted from Cuenca (2013: 208)

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Notes

  1. Other occurrences of al contrari (and similarly Spanish al contrario) not used as a connective but as prepositional phrase or a complex preposition were also excluded.

    (i)

    a.

    Però de vegades passa al contrari. (CTILC, Vicens, 1998).

    ‘But sometimes it is the opposite’

    b.

    Al contrari del que passa en d’altres disciplines en què els professionals tendeixen inexorablement a l’aïllament i a l’especialització, els dissenyadors tendeixen a recórrer els camps de coneixement en sentit horitzontal. (CTILC, Campi i Valls, 1992).

    ‘Contrary to what happens in other disciplines in which professionals inevitably tend to isolation and specialization, designers tend to go through knowledge areas horizontally’

  2. The analysis shows that the uses are the same in Catalan and Spanish. The phenomena described here seem to be found in other languages and other connectives, as briefly indicated in “Conclusions” section.

  3. See also Fraser (2001) on what he calls ‘empty S1 constructions’.

  4. Izutsu and Izutsu (2014) describe a similar behaviour in the case of Australian but and some final particles in Japanese. Similarly, Hancil (2015) analyzes final but in British English and Hofmockel (2017) describes Glasgowian final but. Koivisto (2012, 2015) observes a similar behaviour in the case of final mutta (‘but’) in Finnish.

  5. On connectives in S2 final position, see, e.g., Degand and Fagard (2011), Degand (2014), Haselow (2011, 2012, 2013, 2015), some of the papers included in Hancil, Haselow, and Post (2015b) or Beeching (2016). On clause final pragmatic markers, including connectives, see also Traugott (2016, 2017).

  6. This research further develops general observations included in previous research on refutation connectives carried out in collaboration with Jacqueline Visconti and Maria Estellés (see Cuenca and Visconti 2017; Estellés and Cuenca 2017; Cuenca and Estelllés in press).

  7. I will illustrate the prototypical intonation of all the configurations with a variant of the same example, in order to compare them more easily. I want to thank Jesús Jiménez and Paula Cruselles for their help in the realization of these contours. They have been made using Praat and create_pictures v.4.5, a script that creates and saves pictures (PNG, PDF, wmf, eps, PraatPic) of all the sound files found in a folder. The pictures contain a waveform, a spectrogram, an optional F0 track and optionally the content of the tiers of the TextGrid associated to the sound file.

    Cfr. http://stel.ub.edu/labfon/en/praat-scripts.

  8. On argumentative uses of negative markers, see Waltereit and Schwenter (2010), especially section 3.3, on dialogic uses of tampoco in Spanish.

  9. Fraser (2006) identifies this configuration in English conversation. He labels it as ‘two-speaker examples’, as opposed to ‘one-speaker cases’, which account for prototypical uses. Similarly, Danjou-Flaux (1983) clearly distinguishes au contraire in dialogue and in monologue. The uses included in Danjou-Flaux for French are parallel to those identified here for Catalan and for Spanish.

  10. It is somehow similar to the use of si as an alternative to non in French, as both imply not only negation but also polarity reversal. This similarity explains the possibility of combining si and au contraire as a response to a negative question in the previous turn, as Danjou-Flaux (1983: 278–279) explains.

  11. In other contexts, mainly when the marker reacts to a declarative, the interpretation can be clearly negative (see Fraser 2006) but no such examples have been identified in the corpora.

  12. This is also the case of final particles of the conjunt/adverbial connective type, as described in Hancil et al. (2015a: 11–12) and analyzed in several of the contributions to that edited volume.

  13. I follow here Traugott’s distinction between dialogic and dialogual orientation: “Markers of dialogic orientation signal the extent to which Speakers contest, refute, or build an argument toward alternative or different conclusions […]. I take them to be oriented toward the Speaker’s perspective […]. Markers of dialogual orientation, on the other hand, signal the extent to which turn-taking is facilitated. […] They are oriented toward the Addressee’s stance and participation in the communicative situation” (Traugott 2012: 13). This distinction was previously proposed in Schwenter (2000), who took it from Argumentation Theory (Ducrot 1984; Roulet 1984).

  14. Parenthetical connectives are discourse markers such as however, nevertheless, on the contrary, thus, as a consequence or in addition that can act on their own or following a conjunction (e.g. but or and) linking two segments of discourse (either sentence constituents or independent utterances).

  15. Lewis (2006) compares on the contrary with au contraire and finds some differences. The examples correspond to prototypical uses.

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Acknowledgements

I want to thank the two anonymous reviewers and several colleagues for their contribution to the improvement of this paper: Adrián Cabedo, Paula Cruselles, Maria Estellés, Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen, Jesús Jiménez, Eugenia Sainz and Jacqueline Visconti.

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  1. Dept. de Filologia Catalana/Institut Interuniversitari de Filologia Valenciana, Universitat de València, Valencia, Spain

    Maria Josep Cuenca

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Cuenca, M.J. Defective Connective Constructions: Some Cases in Catalan and Spanish. Corpus Pragmatics 4, 423–448 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41701-020-00083-z

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