ABSTRACT
In the last chapter, I examined in detail the usage of Spanish si as a discourse connective introducing independent utterances with declarative sentence form in pragmatically adversative contexts. Links drawn in chapter 3 between the concepts of conditionality and exclusivity-via Q-based scalar implicature-were made more concrete in chapter 4, where it was shown that one of the polysemies of si has in fact conventionalized the sense of exclusivity associated with the conditional marker, a sense which makes the marker (i.e. its form) suitable for usage as an "exclusive" adversative discourse connective. When viewed together with the traditional distinction made between inclusive (restrictive) and exclusive adversative sentence conjunction, as reflected in Spanish by the conjunctions pero and sino (si+no), respectively, a three-way connection between conditionality, exclusivity, and adversativity became clear. I also showed that in both the monologal and dialogal types of discourse, the form of the conditional marker si pervades the expression of exclusive adversativity in Spanish, contrasting on each level with the typically inclusive adversative usage of pero.
