Transcategoriality and right periphery

Abstract

Among the various syntactic functions that transcategorial but can take, it is the final particle that is the focus of our attention. As it is a characteristic feature of Northern English colloquial conversations, the semantic-pragmatic analysis is pursued in the spoken section of the Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech. Moreover, particular attention is paid to the relationship between final but and information structure in order to account for the strategy of organizing information. In addition, it is shown that its status as a post-rheme element, which takes into account the position of this particle, does not pay tribute to its main function of textual cohesion. Finally, its potential status as an Antitopic is discussed.