The counterargumentative connection in Italian: experimental evidence on the connective "tuttavia"

Counterargumentation marks the disruption of a causal chain by introducing an unexpected conclusion that cancels inferences drawn from a previous premise. The present study compares the processing costs produced by three minimal counterargumentative structures: a) counterargumentation marked by the Italian connective tuttavia (Eng. ‘however’); b) counterargumentation in utterances lacking a connective but containing the phoric element entrambi (Eng. ‘both’); c) counterargumentation with no procedural unit. The reading experiment (1 × 3 design) was carried out with 88 native Italians. The results show that both tuttavia and entrambi are processed as procedural units and that the semantic instruction of the connective helps reduce processing costs, especially when the connection of the phoric element is not present.