The interplay of contrast markers (‘but’), selectives (“topic markers”) and word order in the fuzzy oppositive contrast domain

Abstract This investigation is a large-scale comparative corpus study of the oppositive contrast domain (also called “semantic opposition”) based on parallel texts. Oppositive contrast is established as a fuzzy region of the similarity space of contrast (‘but’), a domain also characterized by the occurrence of selectives (“topic markers”) and of initial non-predicative phrases in VSO/VOS-languages. Major findings are that many languages have special oppositive contrast markers and that there is a continuum between oppositive contrast markers and selectives, although truly intermediate markers are rare. The gradualness between oppositive and counterexpectative contrast is explained by semantic fuzziness and by emphasis, with strong emphasis being dependent on scales. Contrast is a rhetorical discourse relation and strong oppositive contrast can be used as a persuasive strategy aiming at establishing new common ground stepwise. The fuzziness of oppositive contrast has major theoretical and methodological implications. The encoding of the domain neither follows strict universals nor is it maximally diverse (diversity is strongly constrained). Due to its syntactic properties, oppositive contrast cannot be conceived of merely as a preestablished extralinguistic semantic domain. Furthermore, contrast exhibits a high degree of language-internal variability. General trends are reflected both by stable and by emergent grammar.