Two paths to correction

Abstract

This paper argues that there are two types of corrective words across languages, and both types are attested in Mandarin Chinese. One type (e.g. Mandarin you) manages the Common Ground, as Frana & Rawlins (2019) and Bhatt & Homer (2022) have claimed for Italian mica and Hindi thoṛi:, but there is another type that had not been noticed before (e.g. Mandarin bing)–they mark contrast to a salient proposition. Not only is the latter type little-noticed and little-discussed, but it is also more prevalent than it seems: even languages that do not seem to have a dedicated corrective word do have a contrast marker, including English, French, German, Hebrew, Persian and Spanish. This analysis unifies bing and different flavors of ‘but’ across languages, which all mark contrast. My analysis of bing and you relies on the observed subtle differences between them in meaning: the use of you implies the speaker’s impatience with the hearer, but bing does not have this inference. I argue that bing not p presupposes that there is a salient proposition that ¬p contrasts with, while you not p implies that the speaker believes that ¬p was already in the Common Ground.