The phenomenon of a marker of 'parallel interpretation' also having a contrastive function is not unique to English 'also'. Digo (a Bantu language spopken in kenya and Tanzania) has a set of discourse markers which can often replace or co-occur with the word 'piya' (also). I have analysed these (using RT) as markers of parallel and contrastive focus, where contrastive focus is defined as a pragmatically determined form of parallel focus. (The contrastive usage is found almost exclusively in narrative texts whereas the (non-contrastive) parallel usage is found almost exclusively in hortatory and expository texts, but this results from discourse-pragmatic factors to do with the nature and purpose of narrative versus hortatory/expository texts.)
I can send the paper (full reference below) as a pdf file to anyone who is interested (it is a write-up of a conference presentation, not a fully developed journal article).
Steve
Nicolle, Steve (2002).Anaphora and focus in Digo. In: A. Branco, T. McEnery & R. Mitkov (eds.) Proceedings of the 4th Discourse Anaphora and Anaphora Resolution Colloquium (DAARC 2002). Lisbon: Edições Colibri. Pp. 141-146. ISBN 972-772-350-0
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