On the Acquisition of the Discourse Marker But

Abstract

It is well known that the discourse marker but has a variety of uses, and there are well-established accounts of how these different interpretations are derived pragmatically from the encoded meaning. The coherence-based framework sees connectivity as a primary function of but, whereas Relevance Theory views but as a means by which the hearer is guided to the inferential procedure that yields the intended meaning and claims that the coherent interpretation is simply a by-product of the search for optimal relevance. Given the fundamental differences between different theoretical frameworks, a closer examination of actual uses will shed light on the phenomenon of the discourse marker but. For this purpose, the present study examines how children between 4 and 12 years of age use but in the corpus of children's narratives and shows how a procedural analysis accounts for the wide range of the uses of but. This paper also demonstrates that there is a variation in the use of but across ages and that children progressively develop the ways that but is used in narratives.