The contrastive discourse marker ata in Belizean Kriol

•Provides the first empirical and theoretical account of ata in Belizean Creole.•Argues that ata conveys a Gricean conventional implicature of emphatic contrast.•Argues that ata is a contrastive discourse marker in the sense of Fraser (2006a).

This paper investigates the semantics and pragmatics of the discourse marker ata in Belizean Kriol. I argue that ata is a contrastive discourse marker in the sense of Fraser ( “Towards a Theory of Discourse Markers”, 2006a) and that it is used to convey an emphatic contrast with the immediately preceding discourse. I analyze this latter element as a Gricean (Studies in the Way of Words, 1989) conventional implicature. In addition, ata is frequently used in conveying negative attitudes toward the preceding discourse. I argue that this is not a conventional aspect of ata's meaning but that it is instead calculated in context via Gricean pragmatic reasoning.