40 Jahre Partikelforschung/40 Years of Particle Research Bern, 11.-13. Februar 2009 Abstract |
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Carla Umbach (Osnabrück)
Aber is anti-additive – an analysis based on information structure The traditional analyses of the meaning of German aber as well as English but are based on the idea that the use of aber/but is licensed by either a semantic opposition or a denial of expectations triggered by world knowledge (cf. e.g. Lakoff 1971, Lang 1984, Asher 1991, Winter & Rimon 1994). According to these analyses constraints on the use of aber/but are solely due to the discourse participants' knowledge about the situation and background, which leads to more or less ad hoc explications. In Umbach (2005) it is argued instead that the use of aber/but is closely related to information structure and discourse structure.1 The analysis starts from the observation that aber is ungrammatical if both conjuncts are confirmed (or both denied) provided that the sentence is uttered in response to a conjoined yes-no question, cf. (1A) and (1B). The use of aber crucially requires that one of the conjuncts is confirmed and the other one is denied, cf. (1B'). This is called the confirm-denial constraint in Umbach (2005), and is one of the two well-formedness constraints which are known up to now (the other one being the non-well-formedness of *Hans lachte, aber Bill lachte / *John laughed but Bill laughed, cf. Merin 1996). (1) A: Hat Hans das Zimmer aufgeräumt und hat er auch abgewaschen? 'Did John clean up the room and wash the dishes?' B: # (Ja), Hans hat das Zimmer aufgeräumt, aber (ja) er hat abgewaschen. '# (Yes), John cleaned up the room but (yes) he washed the dishes.' B': (Ja), Hans hat das Zimmer aufgeräumt, aber (nein) er hat den Abwasch stehen lassen. '(Yes), John cleaned up the room but (no) he did not wash the dishes.' The analysis in Umbach (2005) makes use of the confirm-denial constraint in assuming that an aber-sentence presents an alternative with respect to the first conjunct which is, however, rejected. Thus the semantics of aber is "anti-additive" consisting of two components: (i) additivity – like the particle too – introducing (or picking up) an alternative topic, and (ii) exhaustivity – like the particle only – denying that the property attributed to the sister topic in the first conjunct holds for the alternative topic.2 In (2), for example, Lisa is presented as a topic in addition to Hans. Due to the exhaustive component of aber we can infer that, out of the alternative topics Hans and Lisa, only Hans had a pleasant afternoon.3 (2) Hans hat sich einen schönen Nachmittag gemacht, aber Lisa ist nach Steglitz gefahren. 'John had a nice afternoon but Lisa went to Steglitz.' Analyzing aber as an anti-additive connective, on the basis of the information structure of the conjuncts, relates it to the well-established formal semantics of focus particles like only and too and, moreover, facilitates the investigation of the role of aber in discourse organization on the basis of a formal theory of discourse, e.g. Groenendijk (2009). ------ 1 The analysis focuses on German aber and extends to English but neglecting minor differences. 2 A similar account is proposed by Saebo (2003). 3 Note that the traditional analyses would have to make ad hoc claims such that the context triggers the expectation that you will not have a pleasant afternoon if you go to Steglitz. References: Asher, N. (1993) Reference to Abstract Objects in Discourse, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Groenendijk, J. (2009), ‘Inquisitive Semantics: Conditionals, Questions and Disjunction’, to appear in the Proceedings of SALT XVIII at Amherst MA, edited by Tova Friedman & Satoshi Ito. Lakoff, R. (1971) If’s, and’s and but’s about conjunction. In Fillmore, Langendoen (eds.): Studies in linguistic semantics. de Gruyter, New York, 114-149. Lang, Ewald (1984): The semantics of coordination. SLCS 9, Amsterdam, Benjamins. Merin, Arthur (1996) Die Relevanz der Relevanz. Fallstudie zur Semantik der englischen Konjunktion 'but'. Habilitationsschrift. Universität Stuttgart. Sæbø, Kjell Johan (2002) Presupposition and Contrast: German aber as a Topic Particle. In Weisgerber (ed.) Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 7, Konstanz 2003, 257–271. Umbach, C. (2005) Contrast and Information Structure: A focus-based analysis of but. Linguistics. Vol 43-1. Winter, Y., Rimon, M. (1994) Contrast and implication in natural language. Journal of Semantics, 11(4), 365-406 |
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