Contrastive and Concessive Argumentation
After Frege's (1985) hint, Anscrombe and Ducrot (1977), Winter and Rimon (1994) and others treated some `contrast' logic or argumentation. But their wisdom did not extend to scalar implicatures. Why do scalar implicatures occur with But? Those dealing with scalar implicatures have not addressed this simple question. Naturally this talk argues that much of the meaning of the conjunctive but is carried to the discourse marker But, which leads scalar implicatures, and constrains the relation between utterances and implicatures. In consequence, the attractive proposal of positing an only-like `exhaustivity' (exh) operator to explain scalar implicatures by Groenendijk and Stokhof (1984), Fox (2006) and many others turns out to be unnatural. `Only' or an `only'- like exh operator cannot evoke a scalar implicature, as will be exemplified; the denial of the alternatives to its prejacent is already assertive or entailed. The essential meaning involved is: concessive admission. And the notion of Contrastive Topic (CT) crucially underlies the phenomenon. A CT occurs when a partially linked potential Topic is or accommodated in prior discourse. It is concessive admission and therefore requires a second conjunct connected by contrastive, `concessive' but (=PA connective) (haciman K, ga J). Merin (1995, 2004) is one step forward but lacks concession and information structure. If the second conjunct is implicit or elliptical, it becomes a scalar implicature. CT and PA are correlated. Without CT, various exh(austivity) operator proposals are inadequate. On the other hand, Contrastive Focus (CF) underlies metalinguistic negation or correction, which is connected by SN connective (anira K, naku J). Hence CF ? SN correlation steps in. Discourse information structure and coordination structure work together.