Defining ‘contrast’ as an information-structural notion in grammar

Building on the basis of the papers in this special issue on ‘Contrast as an information-structural notion in grammar’ as well as earlier research, this editorial paper decomposes the notion of contrast and argues that it cannot be satisfactorily defined from a semantic–pragmatic point of view for all the environments where contrast has been argued to occur. It discusses notions like the size of the alternative set for contrast vs. focus, the explicit mention vs. implicit presupposition of alternatives, and their identifiability. It shows that exhaustivity often accompanies contrast and vice versa but that the two meaning components do not necessarily occur together. It argues that contrast in contrastive focus has different characteristics from contrast in contrastive topics – which also interacts with the contexts in which these occur (corrections vs. parallel structures) – and suggests that contrast should be considered a cover term for phenomena that share a family resemblance but still show important differences.