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Contrast and the structure of discourse

Paper · 2014 · Maziar Toosarvandani

Summary

The paper asks why English but sometimes carries an implied expectation that gets overturned, as in "tall, but agile," and sometimes carries none. The corrective use ("doesn't dance, but sing") and the semantic opposition use ("John is tall, but Bill is short") lack such an expectation. Grice labelled the counterexpectational meaning a conventional implicature, and Bach treated it as a secondary entailment. Neither view explains why the implication varies or disappears.

Toosarvandani gives but a single lexical entry built on the question-under-discussion (qud) framework of Roberts and on Beaver & Clark's idea that words can depend on the qud by convention. But presupposes that each conjunct implies some answer in the qud. Two factors then yield the familiar uses: whether these implications are weak or strong, and what the qud is. The account also predicts a further "double expectation" use. It treats the variation as polysemy of the kind Kratzer proposed for modals, not as homophony. The analysis is purely formal and uses constructed examples, not a corpus. It suggests that other alleged conventional implicature triggers may also refer to the qud.

Key points

  • Three traditional uses of but are distinguished:
    • counterexpectational: the expectation p ⇒ ¬q is denied.
    • corrective: the first conjunct contains negation.
    • semantic opposition: the conjuncts contain antonyms on a positive qud.
  • Weak implications can link both conjuncts to the same qud proposition. This produces direct or indirect denied expectations, and a new "double expectation" use when the conjuncts link to distinct qud propositions.
  • Strong implications cannot share one qud proposition without contradiction, so the qud must hold two propositions. A negative qud forces negation in the first conjunct (corrective). A positive qud is satisfied by antonyms (semantic opposition).
  • The presupposition cannot be cancelled, yet disputing it leaves the at-issue conjunction intact. This explains Grice's intuition without causing a classic presupposition failure.
  • Most items on Bach's "acids" list of alleged conventional implicature devices may also be qud-dependent:
    • contrast markers such as although, nevertheless and yet;
    • focus particles such as only, too, also and even.
  • German sondern and Spanish sino lexicalize the corrective use separately, but the author argues this does not make English but homophonous.

Interesting ideas

  • I1. Instead of listing separate senses, derive one word's uses from a single entry plus two context parameters: the strength of the implication and the shape of the discourse question. This keeps the lexicon small and makes each reading traceable to its cause.
  • I2. Separate the at-issue content (plain conjunction) from a qud constraint, so a listener can reject the implied contrast while still accepting both facts.
  • I3. Use observable form to diagnose the reading: negation in the first conjunct signals corrective but, and antonymous predicates signal semantic opposition.
  • I4. Treat the denied expectation as a recoverable inference, p weakly implies not-q, which can be checked against world knowledge.
  • I5. Use a test pair as a diagnostic: a follow-up that cancels the implication should sound contradictory, while a follow-up that disputes it while accepting the facts should sound fine.

For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

  • I1 (frames): crate prag could store but as one entry with a strength flag and a qud slot, and report which combination produced the counterexpectational, corrective or opposition reading.
  • I2 (world): the world of the text could record both conjuncts as facts and keep the expected-but-denied link as a separate, disputable annotation that never retracts the facts.
  • I3 (tree): after UD parsing, a rule could inspect the cc=but conjuncts for a neg dependent or a WordNet antonym pair and pass a reading hypothesis to prag.
  • I4 (answer): fable and tale QA could answer "why is this surprising?" questions by citing the expectation that but signals and the conjunct that cancels it.
  • I5 (learn): such pairs could serve as negative controls in evaluation, checking that the system neither drops the contrast nor lets it override the asserted facts.

Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.

 Institutions

🎓University of California, Santa CruzSanta Cruz · United States24 works · 3,112 citations

📚 Shelves 3The field of science this work belongs to (OpenAlex fields).Arts and Humanities · 9,296 worksLanguage and Linguistics · 9,206 worksPhilosophy · 211 works

🧭 Topics 3Research subjects and languages the work is about.English · 1,373 worksDiscourse analysis · 394 worksImplicature · 72 works

Cite

Cite as Maziar Toosarvandani. 2014. Contrast and the structure of discourse. Semantics and Pragmatics.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.3765/sp.7.4

@article{toosarvandani2014contrast,
  title = {{Contrast and the structure of discourse}},
  author = {Maziar Toosarvandani},
  journal = {Semantics and Pragmatics},
  year = {2014},
  doi = {10.3765/sp.7.4},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.7.4}
}

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