Squib: A note on the analysis of too as a discourse marker

Abstract

Heim (1990) and Kripke (2009) argue that the adverb too is a trigger of presuppositions that cannot be accommodated, i.e. a hard trigger (Abusch 2002). Contrary to this view Zeevat (2003,b) proposed that too should rather be analyzed as a marker of additive discourse relations, which he argues explains its resistance to accommodation. In this squib, I show that presuppositional analyses of too are actually as explanatory as the discourse marker analysis in this respect, and that the latter faces serious issues with sentences with contrastive topics. I conclude that nothing is gained by reanalyzing hard presupposition triggers as discourse markers. Keywords: presuppositions, discourse markers, too