A relevance-theoretic analysis of 'however'

Abstract

For those who view linguistic meaning as synonymous with truthconditions, to say that however is non-truth conditional amounts to saying that it is semantically empty. On the allied assumption that it is the distinction between truth-conditional and non-truth conditional meaning that defines the boundary between semantics and pragmatics,1) the fact that however does not contribute to truth conditions would be taken to imply that its contribution to utterance interpretation is entirely pragmatic. There is, however, a self-evident problem with consigning however exclusively to the realm of pragmatics as thus delimited: the core