This contribution presents a comparative,
corpus-based study of the arguably most common concessive
connectives of English, German and Spanish, i.e., although,
obwohl and aunque. Concessive
connectives cover a broad range of contexts and the question arises
to what extent prima facie equivalents such as the
three connectives under analysis in this study differ with respect
to parameters of concessivity identified in the relevant literature.
The study shows that obwohl differs
significantly from aunque and
although in exhibiting a strong bias towards
‘canonical’ concessivity, while the latter connectives
(aunque to a greater extent than
although) are also commonly used in
non-canonical, specifically ‘relativizing’ concessives. Some further
distributional differences are identified (with respect to the level
of linking, the givenness status and the topic-comment structure of
the concessive), but they are largely consequences of the
asymmetries in the ‘basic’ type of semantic relation (canonical,
relativizing, adversative). As far as structural properties of the
concessive clauses are concerned, obwohl-clauses
differ from although- and
aunque-clauses in that they rarely precede the main
clause. This tendency cannot be explained in terms of length, or the
functional parameters under investigation, and is thus regarded as a
property of the connectives themselves.
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