Contrastive Topic/focus and Polarity in Discourse
نویسنده
چکیده
The information structure categories of Contrastive Topic and Contrastive Focus are examined to see their crucial roles in polarity and (conventional) implicature generation and implicature suspension and their respective correlatins with PA and SN conjunctions on one hand and descriptive (denotational) negation and metalinguistic negation on the other. The underlying notion of concessivity involved in both Contrastive Topic and Concessive and thereby derived scalarity are exemplified. Their role in quantifiers and quantifier positions on the Square of Opposition are also investigated. So far the role of information structure has not been duly entertained in the semantics and/or pragmatics of implicature and polarity or rather in the “border war” (Horn in this volume) between the two. Korean, English and some crosslinguistic data are employed to seek general principles.
منابع مشابه
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 conjunc...
متن کاملScalar Meanings of the Concessive (-to), the Contrastive Topic Marker (-nun) and -man 'only' in Korean (and Japanese)
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 scalar features of the exhaustivity focus marker –man (or dake) in inherently scalar numeral, quantifier and predicate cont...
متن کاملOn the Notion of Contrast in Information Structure and Discourse Structure
The idea of contrast plays an important role in the analysis of information structure and discourse structure. In the literature on information structure, we encounter the concept of contrastive focus and of contrastive topic, and there is also the opinion that focus in general establishes a contrast. In the literature on discourse structure, it is commonly held that there is a discourse relati...
متن کاملA New Approach to Contrastive Topic: Partition Semantics and Pragmatics
The purpose of the current work is to propose a more comprehensive approach to Contrastive Topic (henceforth, CT) than the existing ones. In the literature, there have been two approaches to CT proposed: one is to take CT as an information-structural discourse-regulating notion on a par with focus and the other is to analyze CT as an focus-sensitive operator with its inherent semantic and pragm...
متن کاملEffects of contrastive intonation and grammatical aspect on processing coreference in Mainstream American English
Coreference choices are influenced by multiple factors, including information structural categories such as topic and focus. These information structural categories can be indicated by intonation, yet few studies have investigated how intonation affects subsequent choices for coreference. Using a story continuation experiment with aurally presented stimuli, we show that the location of contrast...
متن کامل