Semantic opposition coordination: An argument for question settlement

Abstract

This paper studies coordination by 'whereas' and “semantic opposition" 'but', and asks to what extent the conjuncts should parallel and differ from each other. I argue for a question-based analysis in line with Jasinskaja and Zeevat (2008, 2009) and Toosarvandani (2014) but also with key differences from them: the conjuncts of 'whereas' should 'settle' a question under discussion (QUD), with 'question settlement' being defined in the partition theory of questions as selecting precisely one of the cells created by the partitioning question, or a subpart of the cell. This analysis is based on novel data that point to a strong correlation between the felicity of 'whereas'-sentences and the felicity of its conjuncts as direct answers to the QUD. The finding of a dedicated lexical item 'whereas' for semantic opposition suggests that semantic opposition is a distinct use of 'but' and differs from its other uses, supporting Toosarvandani (2014). 'Whereas'- and 'but'-coordination shows the linguistic and cognitive reality of the notion of question settlement proposed in this paper, which the felicity of these coordinated structures depends on. This paper also provides a new diagnostic of question-answerhood that relies not on question-answer pairs, but on 'whereas'- and 'but'-sentences, declarative sentences that are nevertheless closely related to question-answering.