In Contrast - A Complex Discourse Connective

This paper presents a corpus-based study of the discourse connective in contrast. The corpus data are drawn from the British National Corpus (BNC) and are analyzed at the levels of syntax, discourse structure, and compositional semantics. Following Webber et al. (2003), the paper argues that in contrast crucially involves discourse anaphora and, thus, resembles other discourse adverbials such as then, otherwise, and nevertheless. The compositional semantics proposed for other discourse connectives, however, does not straightforwardly generalize to in contrast, for which the notions of contrast pairs and contrast properties are essential.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: LREC
• Authors: Erhard W. Hinrichs, Monica Lau
• Keywords: Compositional Semantics, Discourse, Discourse Connectives, Education, LREC 2008