Die Kodierung der Konzessivität: ein Vergleich deutsch-italienischer Verwendungskontexte

The article analyzes the expression of concessivity in German and Italian. On the basis of identical contexts of use (German and Italian translations from the same English source texts) the correspondences between the two languages are investigated. In the introductory part, at first different definitions of concessivity are discussed, then the main forms of linguistic expression are introduced (concessive connectors such as obwohl/dennoch or sebbene/eppure, adversative connectors such as aber/ma or totally implicit constructions) and finally a survey of the most important concessive connectors in German and Italian is provided, both subordinative and coordinative. The analysis itself is based on a corpus of economic academic texts and focuses on two types of interlinguistic correspondences: 1) between specific concessive connectors and generally adversative connectors; 2) between subordinative connectors implicating an informational downgrading and coordinative connectors implicating an informational upgrading.