Language in Life, and a Life in Language: Jacob Mey – A Festschrift Edited by Ken Turner and Bruce Fraser © 2009 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited. All rights reserved. 12 THE ENGLISH CONTRASTIVE DISCOURSE MARKER ON THE CONTRARY Bruce Fraser 1. INTRODUCTION Discourse markers (DMs) are illustrated by the bold expressions in (1): (1)(a) Three is a prime number but four is not. (b) The water wouldn’t boil, so we couldn’t make any tea. (c) It rained at the picnic. And the beer was warm. These terms are generally held to refer to a functional (as opposed to a grammatical) class of expressions. They do not contribute to the semantic meaning of the discourse segment (S2) which hosts them, but signal the speaker’s intended relationship between this segment and the preceding one (S1). For example, in (1a), but signals that the relationship between S1 and S2 is one of contrast, while in (1b), so signals that the relationship is one of implication or consequence. Most researchers agree that there are three classes of DMs: contrastive discourse markers (but, however, instead, …), elaborative discourse markers (and, furthermore, in addition, …), and inferential discourse markers (so, thus, as a result, …), with the DMs but, and, and so being the most general member of each class. 1 There is a subcategory of contrastive discourse markers (CDMs) in English consisting of on the contrary and the less frequent to the contrary and quite the contrary. In a sequence of discourse segments “S1. On the contrary, S2,” on the contrary signals that the speaker of S2 considers S1 1 For a more detailed presentation of discourse markers, see Fraser (2006). 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 AQ1 AQ2 Emerald_SP-V006_12.indd 87 Emerald_SP-V006_12.indd 87 2/13/2009 8:43:18 AM 2/13/2009 8:43:18 AM