The position of the concessive clauses introduced by aunque in spoken Iberian Spanish

a discursive-functional analysis

Abstract

This work analyses the position of concessive clauses introduced by aunque in spoken Iberian Spanish within the Functional Discourse Grammar framework (HENGEVELD; MACKENZIE, 2008), which provides four hierarchically organized levels of analysis: Interpersonal, Representational, Morphosyntactic and Fonological levels. The starting point for the analysis of the position takes as criteria the presupposition of contents, which is directly related to the informativeness of the clauses, and the (in)dependence of concessive clause in relation to the main clause. The selected data consist of interviews from the PRESEEA Project, more specifically speech samples from the Spanish cities of Alcala de Henares, Granada, Madrid and Valencia. The analysis reveals that the concessive clauses which act in the layers of the Ilocution and Propositional Content, belonging respectively to the Interpersonal Level and the Representational Level, occur, preferably, before the main clause, since they play the role of modifiers. They thus present a greater semantic and syntactic dependence on the main sentence and predominantly contain presupposed contents. On the other hand, the concessive clauses that act in the layers of the Movement and the Discursive Act, units of the Interpersonal Level, always occur after the main clause. Such clauses include comments or digressions concerning the information previously expressed and contain, predominantly, non-presupposed content. The research proves that the position, as criterion of the Morphosyntactic Level, is motivated by the representations originating from the hierarchically superior levels (Interpersonal and Representational).