Inference denial and concessivity: Japanese 'karatoitte' ‘just because‘

Abstract

This paper focuses on the Japanese concessive conjunction 'karatoitte' ‘just because’, which shows an idiosyncratic distribution. It has been reported that Japanese 'karatoitte' typically appears with negation and in certain sentences that express negative sentiment. This paper suggests an analysis of Japanese 'karatoitte' adopting the theoretical mechanism used in the analysis for the Negative Polarity Items (NPIs). This study is expected to bring a new perspective on the nature of concessive meaning by reconsidering the semantic function of “denial of inference” that 'just because' is said to have in terms of the likelihood scalar presupposition used in NPI analysis.