Modal perspectives on counter-expectational 'but'

Abstract

This paper examines a novel analysis of English but in its counter-expectational use, grounded in a weak necessity modal semantics Kratzer (1991). We focus on a problem for existing accounts: the inference triggered by the second conjunct is systematically either too strong or too weak. We discuss Winter and Rimon (1994) and Toosarvandani (2014), and conclude that neither derives the attested inference pattern without over-/under-generation. We propose that counter-expectational but encodes weak necessity relative to a contextually supplied ordering source. Our account is supported by empirical facts showing modal polysemy as part of the meaning of but