Research area "Connectives"

Connectives are one-word items (therefore) or fixed word combinations (sin embargo, EN. however) that link semantically and pragmatically two discourse members or a discourse member to an easily accessible contextual assumption (Portolés 2001: 139), while expressing the relation between them. They operate on the argumentation level and indicate how their host utterance is relevant to a context (Pander Maat and Sanders 2006). The work of the research group “Discourse particles and cognition” in this field focuses on the processing of causal, adversative and concessive relations. Our research studies the effects that connectives have on the processing of information in different languages, depending on the linguistic features of discourse and on the characteristics of different participant groups.

Projects in this area:

Laura Nadal: The Spanish argumentative connective sin embargo: an experimental study

Elisa Narváez García: Consecutive relations and processing effort: a contrastive and experimental study of Spanish por tanto and English therefore

Inés Recio: Processing argumentative relations in L1 and L2 Spanish: an experimental study

Shima Salameh Jiménez: Application of the discourse segmentation model of the research group Val.Es.Co on the experimental study of discourse particles. Unit and position as determining parameters of polyfunctionality: a study of Spanish o sea (EN. that is) and bueno (EN. well).