Concessive Conjunctions Research Articles

The role of causal and concessive connectives in comprehending and producing L2 English discourse

The role of causal and concessive connectives in comprehending and producing L2 English discourse

Framing negative eWOM via conjunctions: The language of customer communication in the luxury hotel sector on social media

In the digital age, social media has a significant impact on consumer perceptions. This business communication study examines the linguistic strategies used to express and repair negative electronic word of mouth (eWOM) in Hong Kong’s luxury hotel sector. The data, which were collected from travel forums, consist of 17,344 words from online hotel reviews (11,647 words) and responses (5,697 words) made by the visitors and senior hotel management of 18 five-star hotels. Using systemic functional linguistics as a framework, this study analyses the logical relations that exist between expectant and concessive conjunctions, as well as the evaluative judgment resources present in an appraisal system. The analysis focuses on the poor service standards framed in the complaints and how the hotel management responds to such situations differently, particularly with respect to repairing customer expectations. This study also examines how loyal fans and frequent travellers present their customer identity when dealing with service-related issues. By developing an understanding of how luxury hotels manage customer complaints, repair customer relationships, and protect their brand reputation through dynamic interactions, this study can provide valuable communication insights for the hotel sector.

An Old Gaelic conjunction rediscovered. Old Gaelic ceni, Scottish Gaelic gar an and related concessive conjunctions in Gaelic

The meaning 'although not' has been expressed by a variety of conjunctions in the Gaelic languages over many centuries. This article considers the history and evolution of these forms and their variants, focusing in particular on gar an 'although not', and considers some related aspects of the historical development of the closely related conjunction mani 'if not', later muna, mura. The origin and significance of the Scottish Gaelic negative concessive conjunction gar an and its variants have not been satisfactorily explained to date. This article illustrates that gar an can be derived straightforwardly from the Old Gaelic conjunction ceni 'although not', previously thought to have disappeared completely from the language in the early medieval period. The survival of reflexes of Old Gaelic ceni as gar an and other variant forms in modern Scottish Gaelic represents a remarakable survival, which has hitherto been misunderstood and undetected. This new identification underlines the importance of Scottish Gaelic for gaining a deeper and nuanced understanding of the historical development of the Gaelic languages.

FROM THE TREASURES OF ANCIENT ITALIAN: CONJUNCTIONS

Languages change continuously: the changes occur in phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon and semantics. Over time, a treasure trove of new words is created, but also another one containing lost words or, in any case, words with a more or less altered meaning. It also includes forms that have disappeared from use, but which have maintained their vitality for centuries. In this paper, we have considered a category of syncategorematic or grammatical words - conjunctions: their form is often conditioned not only by the function performed but also by the sequence in which they are placed. Their diachronic changes, both in form and function, therefore depend on the syntax, which sometimes modifies their phonetic structure and sometimes their grammatical value. Their changes have a different or perhaps broader influence, because they affect not only the changes in the lexical repertoire, but also in syntactic structures. Analyzing Italian conjunctions in this diachronic light, we found four groups of phenomena that led to the disappearance of variants, forms or meanings: changes in the lexical list of conjunctions and the disappearance of phono-orthographic variants replaced by one form with the result of homologation of the system in contemporary Italian; changes in the semantics of some conjunctions (some forms survive at the lexical level, but with the meaning changed); the disappearance of forms in the contemporary language (where the form survives only in literary use or in certain formal registers) and the definitive disappearance of forms. From the analyzes, it emerges that the disappearances that occurred in the category of conjunctions reflect a general tendency towards a shrinking of the system, to the reduction of the number of forms with the elimination of numerous phonoorthographic variants (which also occurred in other grammatical categories) but also with the fall into disuse of very vital lexical units in the Middle Ages. The analysis of the sample shows that some types of conjunctions, particularly concessive, causal and temporal ones, had a "superabundance" of forms that were eliminated over time, felt increasingly archaic starting from the sixteenth century and fell into disuse entirely in the nineteenth century. The most significant and emblematic example are probably concessive conjunctions. In the first prose in ancient Italian the number of units (and their frequency of use) was rather scarce (for example, in the Novellino we have identified only six concessive conjunctions: ancorché, avvegna che, benché, quanto che, quantunque and (con) tutto che). With the great authors of the fourteenth century, the system was enriched both in the variety of units and in the frequency to such an extent that in the Decameron we recorded 23 different concessive conjunctions (ancorché, avvegna che, benché, che che, come che, donde che, dove che, dovunque, eziandio se, malgrado, nonché, nonostante che, onde che, ove che, perché, per quanto, posto che, quando pur, quanto che, quantunque , sebbene, se pure and (con) tutto che). Today, however, only 14 are fully active. A similar situation also occurs in the other types of conjunctions. According to what has been shown, the shrinking process is still ongoing and we could expect other reductions in the number of units in use which today are beginning to prove archaic (allorché, allorquando, ancorché, appena che, checché, conforme che, donde, quasiché).

Onomasiological cyclicity in the expression of concessive relations

In this paper, I discuss processes of language change which have led to the constitution of concessive connectives in two genetically related languages, Latin and Portuguese. I focus on the diachronic developments of the Latin licet, and of bem que and embora, from Portuguese, whose sources are etymologically different: the modal verb licere, the emphatic adverb bem and the volitive adverbial phrase em boa hora. The main purpose is to investigate whether the three phenomena could be taken as stages of an onomasiological cycle of a semantic-pragmatic nature, as proposed by Hansen (2018). Based on studies in Latin linguistics about licet and on the analysis of the grammaticalization processes for bem que and embora in an interactional diachronic sample, I shall argue that, in the three instances of evolution, there has been a stage in which licet, bem and embora have acted as assent markers, and that this usage, in combination with contextual traits, has been crucial to sustain the inferential processes which enabled the concessive interpretation. The similar source and target meanings and the continuity of inferential processes over time also suggest that this is a recurrent path of renewal of the concessive meaning which displays a cyclicity pattern.

The Online Processing of Causal and Concessive Relations: Comparing Native Speakers of English and German

ABSTRACT This article presents a self-paced reading study comparing the online processing of interclausal discourse relations in native speakers of English and German. The study aims to contribute to two overarching questions: First, it puts to the test the so-called causality-by-default hypothesis, which states that causality is a default assumption, whereas concession is less inferable and thus cognitively inherently more complex. Second, it explores the hypothesis that native speakers of English rely more strongly on online inference than native speakers of German. This hypothesis derives from the well-established description of English as exhibiting looser form-function mappings than German. The results of three self-paced reading experiments (one lab-based, two crowdsourced) confirm that readers of German benefit significantly more from the presence of interclausal connectives than readers of English. Moreover, as expected, concessive connectives provide greater processing advantages than causal ones in both languages. Finally, the bias to take causality for granted is only found in English, whereas readers of German do benefit from the presence of causal connectives. It is argued that an account inspired by typological and information-theoretic perspectives is best suited to accommodate these results.

Concessive Connectors though and however in Writing of Native and Non-Native Speakers of English

This paper focuses on connectors though and however in Serbian EFL writing. The logical relationship established by the two connectors is concessive, the concept of concessiveness ranging from the very transparent cases, referred to as the strong ‘contrary-to-expectations’ implicature, to less transparent ones, referred to as the weak ‘contrary-to-expectations’ implicature. Besides, the two lexemes, though and however, can be used in other functional roles in the contemporary language; while though is more frequently used as a conjunction than as a connector, however is more frequently used as a connector than as an adverb.The research followed Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (Granger, 2015). The data includes the three corpora of argumentative essays: a non-native one, ICLE-SE, belonging to the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium), and two native ones, British English and American English subsets of the Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (LOCNESS-BE and LOCNESS-AE, respectively). The research is mainly qualitative.The results have shown that though is almost never used as a connector in the non-native corpus—only 1.7% of the total number of uses occupy this functional role. In the native corpora, conversely, every second or third use is as a connector. The case of however is different. Although it is almost exclusively used as a connector in all the three corpora, there are striking differences in its uses. The initial position is strongly favoured by non-native writers, unlike native writers, who use the medial and the final positions considerably more frequently. Apart from the striking differences, there is also a similarity in the three corpora: there are cases of however directly following the so-called ‘run-on’ comma, which is seen as non-grammatical in the referential descriptive grammars.Finally, we conclude that logical connectors though and however are challenging for both descriptive linguistics and applied domains. It is quite expected, then, that they are a very demanding part of the language learning process, as the research has shown. It is suggested that the research results should be complemented by the classical contrastive analysis, focusing on the two connectors and their equivalents in Serbian.

Chinese learners’ use of concessive connectors in English argumentative writing

AbstractA learner corpus, i.e., a principled collection of contextualized texts produced by second language learners, can be of invaluable help in identifying learners’ needs. Previous learner corpus research has indicated that an area for improvement in second language writing is learners’ use of logical connectors as cohesive devices. While most previous studies have been general surveys that examined a wide range of English connectors, the present one is a more focused investigation, probing into Chinese-speaking learners’ use of concessive connectors. The data is taken from a self-constructed corpus of argumentative essays written by Taiwanese freshmen, who were placed into four proficiency levels. Common errors, including orthographical, syntactic, and semantic ones, were identified and categorized. The frequency distribution of the attested concessive connectors reveals Chinese learners’ development in their use of individual connectors. Difficulties may be attributed to the linguistic complexity of concessive connectors in English and L1 transfer. Moreover, previously identified lexico-syntactic characteristics in learners’ use of English connectors were reconfirmed by our corpus data. More importantly, the pragmatic function of concessive connectors in Chinese learners’ argumentative writing is also addressed. The findings have important pedagogical implications. Pragmatics is an area in need of further attention in learner corpus research, and we have gone some way toward enhancing our understanding of that area.

СИНТАКСИЧЕСКИЙ И СЕМАНТИЧЕСКИЙ СИНКРЕТИЗМ СЛОВА ВЕДЬ НА УРОВНЕ ГИПОТАКСИСА

The paper is devoted to the role of the word ведь in the organization of a subordinate syntactic connection between sentences. The work is carried out within the study of the expression of relations of conditioning through complex sentences in works of the book style – scientific and publicistic. The word ведь has a variety of shades of meaning, it features polyfunctionality and syntactic variability. Most grammatical descriptions qualify it as both a particle and a conjunction. Given the polysemy and variety of uses of this word, modern researchers who study discourse classify it as a discoursive word/discourse marker. It is noted that polysemy and syntactic variability of the modern word ведь result from its historical origin and development. The method of interpretation based on the etymologically inherent meaning of this word and transformation method are proposed as a way to concretize relations marked by this linking device. According to observations on the material of journalism ведь often acts as a linking word for causal constructions both within a complex sentence and between separate, semantically related sentences. In certain cases, there is a combination of causal and conventional meanings. In addition, the combination of ведь with adversative conjunctions a, но adds the seme of concession. The observation results are illustrated with examples from journalism materials with their subsequent analysis. It is shown that replacing ведь with categorical causal, conditional, concessive conjunctions confirms the corresponding relationships, however, it cannot provide a full disclosure of the meaning of the statement, since with such a transformation the seme of presence, complicity, and the author's assessment observed in the original statements is lost. One should say about the stylistic marking of the structures under study, which contribute to the implementation of the evaluative and influencing function of the journalistic style. In other cases, the word ведь acts as a particle, contributing to the actualization of the utterance as something known, obviously expedient. Although there is a causal relationship in such constructions, the connecting function is not paramount there. Thus, the polyfunctionality of a polysemantic word ведь ensures the variability of its use by the authors and a multidimensional approach to its linguistic description.

Contrastive Analysis of Concessive Conjunctions in Translated and Non-translated Arabic Texts: An Exploratory Study

This study seeks to contribute to addressing a gap in theory-driven corpus-based research focused on the so-called translation specific features (TSF) in Arabic translated texts. It provides a contrastive Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL)-informed analysis of concessive/contrastive connective markers in a selected comparable corpus made up of translated and non-translated Arabic texts. This area of corpus-based research has been mainly driven by an interest in the linguistic features distinguishing translated from non-translated texts. The characteristic feature of the present study is the fact that it is based on a comparable corpus of translated and non-translated texts written by the same authors in more or less the same genre. Based on a comparison of concordance data, the study will highlight some interesting patterns of difference in the types and frequencies of concessive conjunctions used, as well as ‘explicitating’ and ‘upgrading’ tendencies between the two components of the corpus. Viewed from an SFL perspective, some such differences do not seem to be triggered by the English source texts involved or dictated by contrastive linguistic requirements but rather by the translation process itself.

CONCESSIVE CONNECTORS IN JAPANESE

Tis paper uses corpus data in an attempt at a combined description of three concessive connectors in contemporary Japanese - (sore)demo; nimokakawarazu; noni. Concessives are interpreted as markers of a contradiction to expectations arising out of an interfering counterforce – thus, cancelling a presupposed “normal consequence of events”. Te three markers, viewed in the specifc paradigm characteristic of the Japanese connectors, are analyzed in respect to their semantic and discourse functions. Tese signal procedural meanings relevant to the construal of the contradicting situations or states of affairs, parameters of the communicative situation. Te main thrust of the present work lies in the application of Russian-based methods of linguistic analysis to the Japanese material. In this way we are able to pick some (presumably universal) pragmasemantic features for discursive connectors, including scale of contradiction, involvement of the speaker, assessiveness, and text orientation. In fact, the three connectors appear to portray roughly three distinct linguistic attitudes to a challenge that a discovered contradiction is – mentalist (correct one’s position to fnd a solution), normative (conserve status quo, forestall conflict), and emotional (manipulate, appealing to one’s subjective state).

Diachronic Corpora, Genre, and Language Change by Richard J. Whitt

REVIEWS Diachronic Corpora, Genre, and Language Change. Ed. by R J. W. (Studies in Corpus Linguistics, ) Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins. . viii+ pp. €. ISBN ––––. Over the last forty years ‘genre’ has been one of the most important concepts in historical linguistics, at least in historical sociolinguistics (see Terttu Nevalainen and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg, ‘Historical Sociolinguistics: Origins, Motivations, and Paradigms’, in e Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics, ed. by Juan M. Hernández-Campoy and J. Camilo Conde-Silvestre (Malden: Blackwell, ), pp. – (p. )). It is thus the laudable aim of this volume to provide a state-ofthe -art overview of the study of genre as an influence on language change as well as the locus of language change, and to supplement other collections of papers on this topic. e book consists of fourteen chapters originally presented at a conference at the University of Nottingham in April . e collection is divided into three sections: Part  on ‘Methods in Diachronic Corpus Linguistics’; Part  on ‘Genre and Diachronic Corpora’; and Part  on ‘Genre-Based Analyses of Linguistic Phenomena’. A richly referenced and intellectually comprehensive introduction by the book’s editor offers a readable and insightful definition of genre in general and the particular challenges faced by addressing these issues in the compilation and mining of diachronic corpora. at the very concept of genre is still under discussion is demonstrated by the fact that, despite the remarks in the general introduction, most papers give their own definition as well. Following on from the general introduction, the first part begins with a contribution by Konstantin Niehaus and Stephan Elspaß, who introduce their corpus project on nineteenth-century German, a project with a special focus on the balance of regional variation and register variation. ey illustrate the benefits of their corpus with a case study of three German grammatical features, one from syntax, one from derivational morphology, and one from inflectional morphology. Because of their corpus design, they can provide evidence that regional variation in German was rather pluriareal than pluricentric and that the view ‘from below’ uncovers more variation for research into the history of modern German. e next chapter, by Bryan Jurish, introduces the formal bases of DiaCollo, an open-source tool for diachronic collocation profiling. ird, Eric Atwell presents a range of corpus resources and their applications developed for classical and modern Arabic, and how they are used despite their different genres and variants to train machine learning of modern texts. e second part consists of two papers, the first by Irma Taavitsainen on the change in genre in English medical writing between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries, and the second by Bethany Gray and Douglas Biber, who show with convincing detail how language change actually happens in the genre of academic writing, a genre that is generally seen to be ‘resistant to change’ (p. ). e grammatical changes under scrutiny by the authors did not originate in speech, as  Reviews their cross-genre comparison shows. is contribution leads into the third part, starting with Georgia Fragaki and Dionysis Goutsos tracking the actual language use between H variety katharévousa and L variety dhimotikí in Greek over nine decades in different genres, showing the changes and their dependence on genre. It is followed by Florian Haas on the increase of the impersonal use of ‘you’ independent of the overall use of second-person pronouns in different genres in English. Ole Schützler maps out the frequencies and semantics of the concessive conjunctions ‘although’, ‘though’, and ‘even though’ in American English. Karolina Rudnicka traces the relation between sentence length, genre, and the syntactic usage of ‘in order to’ in English. Whereas up to this point the third part presents sound studies on linguistic features in corpora and their dependence on genre, the second half of Part  focuses a little more on corpus design itself. e preferred use of single-genre over multigenre corpora is discussed in Carola Trips and Achim Stein’s paper on the rise of the recipient passive in English in the contact situation of Middle English and Old French, an approach similar to that of Andrés Enrique-Arias, who tests the pros and cons...

Conflicts in comparison

AbstractIn a globalised world, national discourses are also perceived and commented on in other countries and languages. This paper focuses on newspaper coverage of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum in both Scotland and Germany, comparing two print media corpora in two languages. The linguistic depiction of the arguments and conflicts in Scottish newspapers is compared to the discussion of Scottish independence in German newspapers. In order to find conflictive ‘hotspots’ in both corpora, adversative and concessive connectors of both languages are taken as a starting point for a comparative conflict-oriented discourse analysis in seven steps. Differences and similarities of the most important conflicting concepts as well as the role of stereotypes and language difference are then compared and discussed.

Alguns marcadors d'oposició en <i>Diccionari per a ociosos</i> de Joan Fuster i en les seves traduccions

Summary: This paper analyzes several markers of opposition or contrast in the essay Diccionari per a ociosos (Dictionary for the idle) by Joan Fuster and in its translations to Spanish, English, Italian and French. It adopts a contrastive stylistic perspective that takes into account the genre of this book and studies the discursive construction of the author’s ethos. The paper examines firstly the main concessive constructions (including concessive conditionals) and connectives contained in the essay, contrasting them with the choices made by translators. Later, it includes other oppositive/contrastive discourse markers within the texts examined. Furthermore, it characterizes the degree of grammaticalization reached by these markers in each language. Keywords: Concessive connectives, opposition discourse markers, grammaticalization, translation, Joan Fuster

Language contacts in modern Judeo-Spanish: Notes on the concessive and concessive conditional clauses

Since the beginning of the Sephardic diaspora in the Ottoman Empire, Judeo-Spanish has been in contact with different languages, both romance and others. The lexical borrowings from these languages are a characteristic element of Judeo-Spanish, especially the Hebraisms of the classical period (until the beginning of the 19th century) and the Gallicisms of the modern period (from the middle of the 19th century onward). The results of these language contacts have seldom been analyzed from a syntactical point of view, a fact that reflects the general lack of detailed studies about Judeo-Spanish syntax. The aim of this paper is to summarize the results of language contacts that can be observed in the concessive and concessive conditional clauses in modern Judeo-Spanish texts, published between 1880 and 1930. First, we see an increase and a diversification of the concessive conjunctions due to the contacts with Western European languages, especially Italian. Second, a linguistic innovation in the concessive conditional clauses reflects the fundamental changes in the language contacts of Judeo-Spanish between the 18th century and the modern period, as well as the modernization of Judeo-Spanish that characterizes its transformation during the last decades of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries.

The image‐schematic basis of causation and concession in English and Spanish

AbstractCognitive linguistics holds that meaning in language is the mapping between linguistic expressions and cognitive structures that arise from our direct sensory experience and interactions with the world. Taking as a starting point the notions of image schema (Lakoff & Johnson ) and force dynamics (Talmy ), in two experiments, we tested naïve subjects’ intuitions about the image‐schematic basis of causal and concessive discourse markers. In the first experiment, conducted in English and Spanish, subjects were confronted with a series of animation that depicted forceful interactions between two entities and were asked to make a force‐choice response indicating the sentences that best described the animations that they had watched. English and Spanish participants showed a general preference for descriptions with causal connectives when one of the entities involved in the interaction was overcome by the other. On the contrary, sentences with concessive connectors were favored when the attempts of one of the entities to control the other were unsuccessful. Similar results were obtained in a second experiment where subjects’ judgments were explicitly guided by the sentence connectors given that the linguistic descriptions that accompanied the animations included a nonce verb in their coda such that literal references to the notion of force were avoided. Altogether, these results support the hypothesis that there is consistency across‐ subjects in the imagistic basis of causal and concessive connectives, which seem to recruit our experiential knowledge about forces as part of their meaning.

Grammaticalisation and information structure: two perspectives on diachronic changes of notwithstanding in written American English

This article traces processes of change affecting the concessive adpositionnotwithstandingin written American English from the early nineteenth century to the present. Data from theCorpus of Historical American Englishshow that, first, there is a dramatic decline in the frequency ofnotwithstanding. Second, whilenotwithstandingas a conjunction or conjunct becomes nearly obsolete, its use as an adposition increases in relative frequency. These two developments are interpreted as specialisation in ongoing grammaticalisation, whereby the range of formal alternatives is reduced within the domain of concessive adpositions more generally and among uses ofnotwithstandingin particular. Third, the postposition becomes the most frequent syntactic variant in the twentieth century. The strengthening of the postposition coincides with two tendencies: (i) the respective phrases are placed in non-final sentence position, and (ii) the noun phrase complements in such constructions are extremely short. In consequence, NP complements ofnotwithstandingare maximally de-accentuated, being very short and far removed from the focus position. Structuring information in this way is not an option for other concessive connectives, and it is argued to be one of the factors resulting in the strengthening of postpositionalnotwithstandingin late modern and present-day American English.

Concessivas num corpus da Idade Moderna

Based on a corpus linguistics analysis, this study proposes a description of the syntactic distribution and semantic functioning of three concessive connectives in a Portuguese epistolary corpus from Early Modern Ages, the P.S. Post Scriptum. These connectives, embora, mesmo que and ainda que, are considered the most frequent conjunctions in Contemporary European Portuguese. Corpus analysis reveals a different diachronic path for each one. In the beginning of the 20th century, while embora frequency of use grows, it is evident the decrease of ainda que, with consequences in the concessive conjunctions system.

Do Causal and Concessive Connectives Guide Emotional Expectancies in Comprehension? A Double-Task Paradigm Using Emotional Icons

Continuity and discontinuity are sometimes marked in discourse by means of connectives. This study tested for the first time whether causal and concessive connectives induce expectations of emotional continuity and discontinuity, respectively. Using a novel double-task paradigm, participants first listened to an antecedent clause with a causal or concessive connective (“Because/Although the pupil studied a lot…”), followed by an emotional icon (emoticon), which could match or mismatch the emotional valence of the antecedent. In Experiment 1 participants had to choose the best continuation for the antecedent clause (“he passed” vs. “he failed” the exam) and then identify the emoticon previously shown. In Experiment 2 they had to judge a perceptual feature of the emoticon before performing the consequent choice task. For causal connectives the congruence between the antecedent and the emoticon valence facilitates the consequent choice task (Experiment 1 and Experiment 2) and the emoticon recognition task (Experiment 1) but not the early perceptual judgment task (Experiment 2). This means that causal connectives promote emotional valence continuity at the stage of meaning integration processes. By contrast, concessive connectives do not induce emotional continuity expectancies. In addition, performance in causal positive antecedents and in concessive negative antecedents was more efficient than in the contrasting conditions, suggesting strong emotional biases for these connectives.

Concessivas num corpus da Idade Moderna

Based on a corpus linguistics analysis, this study proposes a description of the syntactic distribution and semantic functioning of three concessive connectives in a Portuguese epistolary corpus from Early Modern Ages, the P.S. Post Scriptum . These connectives, embora , mesmo que and ainda que , are considered the most frequent conjunctions in Contemporary European Portuguese. Corpus analysis reveals a different diachronic path for each one. In the beginning of the 20 th century, while embora frequency of use grows, it is evident the decrease of ainda que , with consequences in the concessive conjunctions system.