Partículas discursivas y contrastividad: un estudio sobre pues

In contrastive linguistics, polyfunctionality stands out as a highly challenging aspect of numerous discourse particles, inasmuch as a one-to-one functional correspondence of a particle in different languages rarely occurs. The case of partial coincidence is worth particular attention as it is likely to trigger interference (Sainz, 2006), particularly between languages which are akin to one another, as is the case for Spanish and Italian. In the light of these premises, the present study aims at performing a contrastive analysis of Spanish polyfunctional particle pues and therefore to provide guidance in selecting those Italian equivalents that best fit the different context-specific discourse functions. The analysis is carried out using a semasiological approach, by means of firstly collecting the whole range of values ascribed to pues within recent linguistic studies and grammars, taking into account its uses as a discourse marker as well as those peculiar to the grammatical class of conjunctions. Subsequently, a Spanish-Italian parallel corpus serves as a basis for detecting the correlations between the discourse functions of pues and its occurrences in different discourse positions, in accordance with the Information Units of the Basel Model (Ferrari et al., 2008, 2018). Finally, the outcomes of such contrastive analysis are schematized so as to highlight the main Italian equivalents of pues on the basis of its context-specific value and its occurrence within a specific Information Unit.