isContrastive

Iscontrastive is a term used in linguistics and natural language processing to denote whether a given linguistic unit—such as a word, phrase, or clause—participates in a contrastive relation within a sentence or discourse. In practice, iscontrastive is often encoded as a boolean feature (commonly written as is_contrastive or isContrastive) in annotated corpora and in data fed to language models.

In theoretical linguistics, contrastive elements carry focus or contrast markers that differentiate them from alternatives. Marking contrastive items helps describe information structure and discourse semantics, including the presence of contrastive focus, contrastive topics, or corrective focus. This labeling aids analysts in describing how a sentence guides listener attention and how meaning shifts with different alternatives.

In computational applications, datasets and annotation schemes may include an is_contrastive flag to train algorithms to recognize or generate contrastive constructions, or to evaluate models on their ability to identify focus-bearing items. It can accompany token-level or phrase-level annotations and be used in tasks such as understanding questions, answer generation, or discourse-aware text generation.

Examples: In the sentence “I wanted the red apple, not the green one,” the adjective red is often treated as contrastive with respect to the green alternative. In a dialogue like “Do you want tea or coffee?” a contrastive marking may highlight the choice between options, depending on context and analysis conventions.

Note that the notion and labeling conventions for iscontrastive vary across languages and annotation schemes; researchers should consult the guidelines of their specific corpora or toolkits. See also information structure, focus, discourse analysis, and annotated corpora.