Modal forms expressing probability and their combination with concessive sequences in French and Italian

This paper deals with the combination between modal forms and concessive constructions in French and Italian, which we investigated in the framework of a tool-based approach to the linguistic analysis of corpora. To this end, we analyzed the frequency of forms expressing epistemic value and compared it to the frequency of their co-occurrence with the conjunction mais/ma (‘but’), seeking regularities in the link between this co-occurrence and the ability of an epistemic form to convey new meanings.

, 2015