Abstract
The semantics of the coordinator but does not fit neatly into the traditional distinction between entailments and conversational implicatures. In its counterexpectational use, but can convey an implication relating its two conjuncts, which Grice (1975) classifies as a conventional implicature because its behavior diverges from both entailments and conversational implicatures. I propose that this meaning component arises from but ’s interaction with the discourse context – specifically, how it makes conventional reference to the question under discussion (QUD) in the sense of Roberts (1996/2012, 2004). This derives the variable interpretation of the implication in the counterexpectational use, as well as its absence in the corrective and semantic opposition uses of but . This account provides a new perspective on the relationship between the different uses of but as a type of modal polysemy (Kratzer 1981, 1991), and it suggests that other expressions that have been argued to have conventional implicatures might also make conventional reference to the QUD. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.7.4 BibTeX info
Highlights
Natural language meaning is usually taken to arise in one of two ways
The qud does, contain one proposition that is implied by the first conjunct and whose negation is implied by the second conjunct — that the player is clumsy
In (45), there is a proposition in the qud — that the speaker is going to get wet — that is implied by the first conjunct and whose negation is implied by the second conjunct, if we again take the modal base to be epistemic and the ordering source to be a stereotypical one
Summary
Natural language meaning is usually taken to arise in one of two ways. On the one hand, sentences have entailments (‘what is said’ in Grice’s terms), which. The sentence in (3) has an interpretation where all it conveys is that Liz does not dance and that she does sing This corrective use of but does not give rise to an expectation that is denied, unlike the counterexpectational use illustrated in (2). The semantic opposition use of but illustrated in (4) lacks an expectation that is denied This sentence can be interpreted as expressing the two propositions that John is tall and that Bill is short. We are not led to expect that, because Liz does not dance, she does not sing — or that, because John is tall, Bill is not short These are distinct uses of but, not necessarily distinct meanings. I will propose a semantics for but that states for a given sentence what its interpretation is in a given context, and we will find that, in the end, the possible range of interpretations for but sentences will not be entirely subsumed in the traditional three-way classification
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