The discourse connectives <i>ao invés</i> and <i>pelo contrário</i> in contemporary European Portuguese

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to characterize the discourse connectives ao invés and pelo contrário in contemporary European Portuguese (henceforth, CEP), and, more specifically, to identify the semantic constraints they impose on the constituents they relate. The analysis will take into account the different syntactic constructions in which they occur and the type of discourse relation they mark. Ao invés marks two different discourse relations: prototypically, a contrastive comparison relation, peripherally, a substitution relation. Pelo contrário may also mark a contrastive comparison, but prototypically it is used in refutation contexts, encoding a rectification discourse relation. IntroductionThe research presented in this paper was developed within a line of research in CELGA 2 focused on discourse connectives rarely mentioned or, let alone, described in the Portuguese grammars available.To the authors' knowledge, there are no systematic studies available on the constructions with ao invés and pelo contrário in contemporary European Portuguese. In Peres (1997), ao invés and pelo contrário are classified as operators that express contrastive connections between discourse units. The specific contrast relation conveyed by the two connectives is not, however, 1 We want to thank one of the anonymous reviewers for the valuable comments on the previous version of this paper. The usual disclaimers apply.

Discourse markers in English and European Portuguese translations: establishing functional equivalents and types of omission

“…Many papers on DMs traditionally yield to explanation of the existing rich terminological range that define this linguistic category, be it discourse markers (Fraser, 1999;Schiffrin, 1987;Lopes, 2014), pragmatic markers (Brinton, 1996;Aijmer, 2004;Cuenca, 2008), pragmatic particles (Östman, 2006), discourse connectives (Blakemore, 2002), etc., well-known labels, which certainly are not limited by this short exemplification list 1 . In this respect, it is important to mention here that the analysis presented in this paper does not refer to the omission of 'discourse markers' only, but to omission of the categories also defined as 'discourse connectives', 'pragmatic markers', and so on.…”

“…But for reformulation, quer dizer ('I mean') can also express additional meanings in the context (Lopes, 2014). Additional meanings include mitigation, conclusion or 'filler' (the latter used in oral spontaneous discourse only).…”

“…For more on this point, seeAijmer (2004),Blakemore (2002),Brinton (2008),Cuenca (2008), Fischer (1998),Fraser (1999),Lopes & Sousa (2014).4 For instance,Cuenca (2008) based her analysis of the translation of the DM well into Spanish and Catalan on this method.…”