Presupposition and Contrast: German 'aber' as a Topic Particle

Abstract

Contrastive connectives and particles are commonly ascribed a ‘procedural’ semantics in terms of implicatures. However, there are signs that they interact with the topic – focus structure of the sentence and carry presuppositions involving negation and alternatives. Pragmatic effects can be traced to various ways to identify this presupposition and to justify it in the discourse, showing that a declarative (but dynamic!) semantics is preferable.