The definition of connectors, connectives and conjunctions according to the Language into Act Theory

This paper deals with the definition of the linguistic categories of Connector, Connective, and Conjunction in Spoken and literary Italian according to the Language into Act Theory. These roles can be played by a set of polyfunctional morphemes such as conjunctions and adverbs, but while Connectives and Conjunctions are morpho-syntactic categories, Connectors belong to the information structure of speech, which is structured into utterances and information units according to prosodic and pragmatic criteria. In the speech, Connectors are isolated in a prosodic unit and bridge the discourse with the information unit expressing the illocutionary force, Connectives opening an information unit, link its semantic content with the previous discourse, Conjunctions occur between the expressions of an information unit, ensuring compositional relations among them. In literary writing, which is structured into paragraphs and periods defined by punctuation, the syntactic role of Conjunctions can be played under the requirement of Modal cohesion. When a morpheme opens a paragraph or a phrase after week punctuation, modal cohesion with the antecedent is not ensured and it works as a Connective between independent scenes in paratactic relation.