Counter‐Argumentation and the Rigidity of Procedural Meaning: An Experimental Study on the Italian Connective Tuttavia

ABSTRACT The counter‐argumentative Italian connective tuttavia (Eng. “however”) marks the disruption of a causal chain by introducing an unexpected conclusion that cancels inferences drawn from a previous premise. Thus, under neutral conditions, tuttavia connects two argumentatively anti‐oriented members of discourse. Conversely, if those members hold a coordinated relationship, the premise would be argumentatively insufficient to allow a discursive relationship of counter‐argumentation, resulting in discursive incoherence. An eye‐tracking reading experiment compared the processing costs generated by an utterance in which tuttavia was inserted in a neutral argumentative structure with those of a causal relationship between two co‐oriented discourse members. Results showed that, faced with this type of argumentative insufficiency, readers seem to desist from processing as the cognitive effort of an incompatible assumption may be excessive.