The discourse function of adversative conjunction

Abstract

This paper examines some discourse uses of adversative conjunctions ma in Italian and but in English: the discourse uses we analyze are occurrences of ma/but with only one clause, which can be a declarative, interrogative, imperative, or exclamative sentence. We limit our discussion to occurrences of ma/but with declaratives and interrogatives, and focus primarily on the latter. We observe that, while they can both appear with declaratives, ma and but differ with respect to what kinds of interrogative sentences they are compatible with: both ma and but are infelicitous in out-of-the-blue information-seeking questions, but while ma is acceptable in polar questions and in constituent questions, but is only acceptable in negative polar questions. We provide a semantic analysis of these particles that accounts for their distribution in both languages and for the cross-linguistic differences we discovered.