Concessivity, Conditionality, Scalar Implicatures, and Polarity – with Reference to Contrastive Topic/Focus

This paper investigates the systematic relatedness between the concessive –to (or mo)-marked polarity phenomenon and the high tone –nun (or wa)-marked Contrastive Topic phenomenon with respect to underlying concessivity and thereby derived scalarity. I also investigate the correlations between Contrastive Topic and PA conjunction (-ciman) on one hand and between Contrastive Focus and SN conjunction (ani-i-ra) on the other to show the linkage between information structure and argumentation structure of Qand R-implicatures crosslinguistically. I will touch on the scalar features of the exhaustivity focus marker –man (or dake) in inherently scalar numeral, quantifier and predicate contexts. In the meanwhile, it will also be shown that there is a close relation between polarity/negativity and implicature (suspension).