This study presents a contrastive analysis of three pairs of Catalan and Spanish reformulative discourse markers that contain the word fi: en fi / en fin, al cap i a la fi / al fin y al cabo and en definitiva / en definitiva. The specific goals of the paper are: (a) to discern the similarities and differences between the instructions they establish; (b) to study their position in the utterance (initial, medial, final) and their co-occurrence with other conjunctions and (c) to discuss whether their pragmatic functions can be attributed to their morphological patterns and to their degree of grammaticization. Findings suggest that, even though there aren’t differences between the two languages analyzed, there are important differences between the three pairs of markers analyzed: in the instructions that each of them carries out and in their utterance position, and in their co-occurrence with other conjunctions. This study proves that, in practice, the three pairs of reformulative markers are not exchangeable in all discourse contexts, and they cannot be considered synonymous. Finally, despite their degree of grammaticization, their pragmatics functions can be attributed to the value of the word fi.

Aquest treball s’ha realitzat gràcies al finançament dels projectes Identitats i cultures digitals en l’educació lingüística (ICUDEL) (EDU2014-57677-C2-1-R), i Gr@el (Grup de recerca en aprenentatge i ensenyament de llengües), subvencionat pel govern català (AGAUR, 2014SGR 1042-F).