UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 9 (1997)
Because and although: a case of
duality?
CORINNE ITEN
König (1989) argues that there is a relation of duality between concessive and causal
constructions. Therefore, he maintains, any account of the meaning of causal connectives like
because, via duality, also provides an account of the meaning of concessive
connectives such as
although. This paper lists a number of problems with König's account.
Appealing to notions
central to relevance theory, it will be argued that context plays an important role in
determining
the propositions expressed by utterances of causal and concessive sentences. Because of this
context-dependence there cannot be said to be a semantic relation of duality between
because and
although.
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