The semantics of logical connectors: Therefore, moreover and in fact

Abstract

When teaching English words, teachers and textbooks may place more emphasis on 'content' words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) than on words that contribute to the 'textual' aspect of English, such as logical connectors. A consequence is that even if a student has some mastery of grammar and the use of 'content' words, they may not be able to produce cohesive texts or construct logical relations. Teaching the meanings of logical connectors is not easy, and the traditional use of synonyms and examples of use are not always helpful. Using synonyms in English or supposedly equivalents in the student's first language is not ideal because the student may end up understanding the word from the perspective of another word or, worse, another language. Using examples of use may be helpful to a certain extent but this method does not spell out the invariant meaning of the logical connector in question and the student is expected to draw their own conclusions on the basis of a few examples. To overcome such pedagogic obstacles, some scholars advocate the use of a maximally clear and minimally ethnocentric metalanguage, the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM), to capture word meaning. In this paper, the NSM methodology, founded by Anna Wierzbicka, is used to capture the meaning of three logical connectors, therefore, moreover and in fact for English language teaching purposes.