The current paper aims to investigate the distinctions in meaning between two prototypical markers of contrast in Modern Greek, i.e. alla and ma, from a relevance-theoretic viewpoint. At first sight, the two markers seem freely interchangeable across contexts, creating the impression that they basically share the same meaning. However, a more careful exploration of the contextual occurrences of these markers unravels their finely grained distinctions in meaning. This type of exploration requires a detailed categorization of the types of context that license or preclude the application of the markers at hand. In this sense, specific contexts highlight aspects of interpretation that motivate the use of one of the markers but not the other. Specifically, as it turns out, while the use of alla is chiefly associated with contexts of procedural elimination, in standard relevance-theoretic terms, the use of ma is justified in relation to expressing the speaker’s attitude of surprise to a contextual assumption constructed by the hearer, in addition to effecting procedural elimination. In this sense, ma proves to encode a dual constraint on the implicitly communicated content of an utterance, explained univocally in procedural terms.

本文旨在研究现代希腊语中两种典型的对比标记在含义上的区别，即alla和ma，从关联理论的角度来看。乍一看，这两个标记在上下文之间似乎可以自由互换，给人的印象是它们基本上具有相同的含义。但是，对这些标记的上下文出现的更仔细的探索揭示了它们在含义上的细微差别。这种类型的探索需要对许可或排除手头标记应用的上下文类型进行详细分类。从这个意义上讲，特定的上下文突出显示了解释的各个方面，这些方面促使人们使用一种标记而不是另一种。具体地说，事实证明，虽然使用阿拉主要与程序消除的上下文有关，但按照标准的相关理论，使用ma除了有效地消除程序外，在表达说话者对听众所建构的情境假设的惊讶态度方面是合理的。从这个意义上讲，ma证明了对隐式传达的话语内容的双重约束进行编码，这在程序术语中是唯一解释的。