1887
Volume 14, Issue 3
  • ISSN 1384-6655
  • E-ISSN: 1569-9811
USD
Buy:$35.00 + Taxes

Abstract

This paper deals with the semantics of two discourse markers, viz. French (“in fact”) and Dutch (“actually”), commonly associated with the expression of “opposition” and “reformulation”. A special focus lies on methodological issues in the description of such markers, since their non-propositional meanings seem to require what is called a ‘combined corpus approach’, including written and spoken comparable data as well as translation corpora. It is argued that and are best described as adversatives, at the intersection of “opposition” and “reformulation” which constitute their basic meanings, and from which other meanings such as “causality”, “counterexpectation”, “enhancement” and “attenuation” can be inferred. Evidence from all sets of corpora moreover suggests that it is the semantic underspecification of and (especially) which ultimately accounts for their high level of polysemy.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/ijcl.14.3.03mor
2009-08-20
2025-02-17
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/ijcl.14.3.03mor
Loading
  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): adversativity; comparable corpora; discourse markers; translation corpora
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error