Non-integrated (Concessive) Conditionals and the Internal Layering of the Speech-Event Domain

In this article I explore the internal layering of the upper left-peripheral domain of the clause in Italo-Romance, determining the relative order of interjections, discourse markers and vocatives, and non-integrated (concessive) conditional clauses. These clausal constituents, unlike event conditionals, provide information about the dialogic roles of discourse participants in the utterance situation; hence they are analyzed as structurally non-integrated dependent clauses working as speech event modifiers by means of which the speaker links his/her speech act to the discourse context, and generated inside a specifier position of a Speech-Event field located in the high left-periphery of the main clause, above the Force node. Within this structural domain they occupy a relatively low position, as they follow, in the unmarked word order, other utterance related lexical items such as interjections and some discourse markers.