On Concession

This paper proposes that concession should be analysed in terms of inferences based on the likelihood of event occurrence and that an alternative set of events should be presupposed in such inferences. In order to give an empirical content to this proposal this paper discusses the pragmatic aspects of the English word even and the Korean morpheme -lafo and claims that the notion of likelihood is the basis of the pragmatic inference of concession and the quasi-universal quantification erect. It is also claimed that unexpectedness, which is conceptually tied to concession, on the other hand, pertains to the same kind of pragmatic inference but presupposes the existence of an alternative set of individuals instead of an alternative set of situations.