Adversative connectives have been analyzed as articulating explicit and implicit facets of argumentative moves and
have been thus recognized as potential argumentative indicators. Here we examine adversative connectives Ger.
aber, Fr. mais, It. ma (‘but’) in young children’s speech in the context of
the ArgImp project, a research endeavor seeking to understand in which situations children aged between two and six years engage
in argumentation and how their contributions are structured. Two multilingual corpora have been collected for the project: (1)
everyday family conversations, (2) semi-structured play activities and problem solving in a kindergarten setting. Through the
detailed analysis of a small collection of examples, we consider the indicative potential of adversative connectives for
identifying argumentative episodes in interactions involving young children and for the reconstruction of the inferential
configurations of children’s contributions to these argumentative discussions. The results show that fully fledged argumentative
interpretations of adversatives occur as a possibility in children’s speech, and that adversative connectives can be used
profitably to identify less apparent argumentative confrontations and implicit standpoints in children’s speech.
1996 “Insertion of Connectives by 9- to 11-Year-Old Children in an Argumentative Text”. Argumentation 10(2): 253–270.
Anscombre, Jean-Claude and Oswald Ducrot
1977 “Deux mais en français?”. Lingua 43(1): 23–40.
Asher, Nicholas and Alex Lascarides
2003Logics of Conversation. Cambridge / New York: Cambridge University Press.
Convertini, Joséphine
2019Contributo allo studio dei tipi di argomento in situazioni di problem solving tecnico da parte di bambini in età prescolare. PhD dissertation. University of Neuchâtel.
Ducrot, Oswald, Sylvie Bruxelles, Eric Fouquier, Jean Gouazé, Géraldo dos Reis Nunez, and Anna Rémis
1980 “Mais occupe-toi d’Amélie”. In Les mots du discours, ed. by Oswald Ducrotet al., 93–130. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit.
Freeman, James B.
1991Dialectics and the macrostructure of arguments. A theory of argument structure. Berlin/New York: Foris.
Freeman, James B.
2011Argument Structure: Representation and Theory. Amsterdam: Springer.
, Rebecca Schär, Anne-Nelly Perret-Clermont and Antonio Iannaccone (2017) Argumentation as a dialogic interaction in everyday talk: Adults and children playing by the rules in board game play. International Association for Dialogue Analysis (IADA) conference, Bologna, October 2017.
Greco Sara, Anne-Nelly Perret-Clermont, Antonio Iannaccone, Andrea Rocci, Joséphine Convertini and Rebecca Schär
2018 “The Analysis of Implicit Premises within Children’s Argumentative Inferences”. Informal Logic 38(4): 438–470.
Greco, Sara
2017 “Using Argumentative Tools to Understand Inner Dialogue”. Argumentation 31(2):331–358.
Kehler, Andrew
2002Coherence, reference, and the theory of grammar. Palo Alto, CA: CSLI Publications.
Moeschler, Jacques
1989Modélisation du dialogue: représentation de l’inférence argumentative. Paris: Hermès.
Mondada, Lorenza
2005 « L’analyse de corpus en linguistique interactionnelle: de l’étude de cas singuliers à l’étude de collections”. In Sémantique et corpus, ed. by Anne Condamines, 76–108. Paris: Hermès.
Nølke, Henning, Kjersti Fløttum and Coco Norén
2004ScaPoLine. La théorie scandinave de la polyphonie linguistique. Paris: Kimé.
Peldszus, Andreas and Manfred Stede
2013 “From argument diagrams to argumentation mining in texts: A survey”. International Journal of Cognitive Informatics and Natural Intelligence (IJCINI) 7(1):1–31.
Peterson, Carole
1986 “Semantic and Pragmatic Uses of ‘but’”. Journal of Child Language 13(3):583–590.
Piaget, Jean
1980Les formes élémentaires de la dialectique. Paris: Gallimard.
2019Inference in Argumentation: A topics-based Approach to Argument Schemes. Cham: Springer.
Rocci, Andrea and Carlo Raimondo
2017 “Dialogical Argumentation in Financial Conference Calls: the Request of Confirmation of Inference (ROCOI)”. In Argumentation and Inference: Proceedings of the 2nd European Conference on Argumentation, Fribourg 2017 (Vol. II), ed. by Steve Oswald and Didier Maillat, 699–715. London: College Publications.
Rocci, Andrea
In press. The Language of Argumentation ed. by Ronny Boogaart, Henrike Jansen and Maarten van Leeuwen Springer
Schär, Rebbeca
2018An argumentative analysis of the emergence of issues in adult-children discussions. PhD dissertation. Lugano: USI – Università della Svizzera italiana.
Schär, Rebecca and Sara Greco
2018 “The emergence of argumentative issues in everyday discussions between adults and children”. International Journal of Semiotics and Visual Rhetoric 2(1):29–43.
Snoeck Henkemans, Francisca
1995 “ ‘But’as an indicator of counter-arguments and concessions”. Leuvense Bijdragen 841:1–14.
Spooren, Wilbert and Ted Sanders
2008 “The Acquisition Order of Coherence Relations: On Cognitive Complexity in Discourse”. Journal of Pragmatics 40(12):2003–2026.
Umbach, Carla
2005 “Contrast and Information Structure: A Focus-Based Analysis of but.” Linguistics 43(1):1–22.
van Eemeren, Frans H. and Rob Grootendorst
1992Argumentation, Communication, and Fallacies, A Pragma-Dialectical Perspective. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
van Eemeren, Frans H., Peter Houtlosser and Francisca Snoeck Henkemans
2007Argumentative indicators in discourse: A pragma-dialectical study. New York: Springer.
van Rees, Agnes
1992The Use of Language in Conversation. Amsterdam: SicSat.
Winterstein, Grégoire
2012 “What but-sentences argue for: An argumentative analysis of but”. Lingua, 122(15): 1864–1885.
Zeevat, Henk
2012Objection marking and additivity. Lingua, 122(15):1886–1898.
Cited by
Cited by 9 other publications
Bubikova-Moan, Jarmila & Margareth Sandvik
2022. Argumentation in Early Childhood: A Systematic Review. Human Development 66:6 ► pp. 397 ff.
Convertini, Josephine
2021. An Interdisciplinary Approach to Investigate Preschool children’s Implicit Inferential Reasoning in Scientific Activities. Research in Science Education 51:1 ► pp. 171 ff.
Convertini, Josephine & Francesco Arcidiacono
2021. Embodied Argumentation in Young Children in Kindergarten. Education Sciences 11:9 ► pp. 514 ff.
Convertini, Josephine & Margherita Luciani
2023. Social construction of the image of the psychologist and of the patient: the role of implicit premises. Frontiers in Psychology 14
Luciani, Margherita & Josephine Convertini
2024. Patients and psychotherapists using concessive counter‐argumentation: Co‐constructing new framings. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research 24:1 ► pp. 169 ff.
Reuter, Friederike
2023. Explorative mathematical argumentation: a theoretical framework for identifying and analysing argumentation processes in early mathematics learning. Educational Studies in Mathematics 112:3 ► pp. 415 ff.
Rocci, Andrea
2021. Diagramming Counterarguments: At the Interface Between Discourse Structure and Argumentation Structure. In The Language of Argumentation [Argumentation Library, 36], ► pp. 143 ff.
Schumann, Jennifer, Sandrine Zufferey & Steve Oswald
2021. The Linguistic Formulation of Fallacies Matters: The Case of Causal Connectives. Argumentation 35:3 ► pp. 361 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 1 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.