Sporadic aspect as a pragmatic enrichment of dynamic root modality

2012 ◽  
pp. 25-43
Keyword(s):  
Pragmatic Enrichment ◽  
Root Modality

cognitive-pragmatic account of the English imperative-conditional construction

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-269
Author(s):  
Keding Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Processing Unit ◽  
Pragmatic Approach ◽  
The Third ◽  
Pragmatic Enrichment ◽  
Symbolic Structure ◽  
Speaker Intentions ◽  
Interactive Relationship ◽  
Pragmatic Account ◽  
Everyday Communication

The imperative-conditional construction (ICC) in English is a type of construction which consists of an ordinary imperative clause and an ordinary declarative clause connected by the connective and or or. This article deals with the speaker intentions of ICCs and their motivations from a cognitive-pragmatic approach. Based on the concept of construction in cognitive linguistics, an ICC can be called a complex symbolic structure which, though composed of two components, should be regarded as a single pragmatic processing unit. It is demonstrated that, in everyday communication, the ICC can usually convey three kinds of speaker intentions: a prohibitive intention, an inducing/forcing intention, and an advisory intention. The first refers to the intention of the speaker to prohibit the hearer from carrying out the act described by the imperative. The second is the intention of the speaker to induce or force the hearer to bring about the act described by the imperative. The third refers to the intention of the speaker to advise the hearer to carry out the act described by the imperative. These speaker intentions are highly motivated. The motivations include the constructional context, the conditional relation between the imperative and the declarative, the directive force of the imperative, the pragmatic enrichment of the declarative, and the complementary and interactive relationship between the imperative and declarative clauses, among which the constructional context serves as an overall motivation, and the rest may be seen as specific motivations.

On Convention and Coherence

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Kehler ◽  
Jonathan Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Ambiguity Resolution ◽  
Adequate Account ◽  
Language Understanding ◽  
Pragmatic Enrichment

A bedrock principle in pragmatics is that the linguistic signals produced by speakers generally underdetermine the meanings that are communicated to interpreters. For Grice, for instance, utterance meaning lies close to what is overtly encoded, allowing only for the resolution of indexicals, tense, reference, and ambiguity. Lepore and Stone (L&S) agree, but with a stunning twist: they analyze all extrasemantic content as being derived from ambiguity resolution, leaving no work for Gricean tools. Despite significant areas of concurrence with L&S, we ultimately find their analysis to be untenable. To establish this, we focus on a form of pragmatic enrichment that recruits coherence establishment processes to apply within the clause—‘eliciture’—for which we see no credible analysis in terms of ambiguity resolution. We argue that an adequate account of language understanding must recognize the robust roles of both ambiguity resolution and pragmatic enrichment, using tense interpretation as a case study.

scholarly journals Analogy-driven change: the emergence and development of mirative end up constructions in American English

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-121
Author(s):  
MARIO SERRANO-LOSADA
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
American English ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Pragmatic Enrichment ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Diachronic Development

This article explores the diachronic development of mirative end up in American English, which emerged in the late nineteenth century and which seems to be, at present, in the process of becoming a parenthetical element. The rise of the various mirative end up constructions is argued to be the result of both pragmatic enrichment and paradigmatic analogy, motivated by a series of semantically and formally related expressions, most prominently by mirative turn out. Moreover, the article delves into the process of cooptation to explain the emergence of parenthetical instances in the present-day language. Cooptation is understood as an intrinsically analogical-driven mechanism when it entails the eventual grammaticalization of formulaic parenthetical constructions. Data for the present study were taken from a variety of diachronic and synchronic sources, which include COHA, COCA and NOW, among others.

A relevance-theoretic account of the use of the discourse marker well in translation from Chinese into English

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 162-179
Author(s):  
Wu Guangjun
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
Discourse Marker ◽  
Pragmatic Enrichment ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Special Category

Abstract Discourse markers are a special category of words or expressions which have been shown to pose challenges during the translation process. This article adopts a relevance-theoretic perspective and, based on the two English translations of the Chinese play Leiyu (Thunderstorm), explores the use of the discourse marker well in translation from Chinese into English. The findings show that the discourse marker well in translation from Chinese into English is added in two scenarios: to intensify weaker forms of a similar Chinese discourse marker or as an addition when omitted in Chinese. Moreover, interlingual pragmatic enrichment will ensue and the English translations, in comparison with their Chinese originals, become more determinate. Based on this study, we can conclude that discourse markers are important pragmatic elements in translation from Chinese into English. Likewise, contrastive pragmatics is shown to be of potential in the process of translation.

Root modality

2015 ◽  
pp. 62-90
Author(s):  
Michael Hegarty
Keyword(s):  
Root Modality

Three accounts of propositional relation reports

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wayne A. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Propositional Attitudes ◽  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
Semantic Ambiguity ◽  
Pragmatic Enrichment ◽  
Scott Soames ◽  
Cognitive Event

Abstract Peter Hanks and Scott Soames have developed a theory of propositions as structured cognitive event types, as have I in earlier works. They use the theory to offer similar accounts of transparent propositional relation reports, and very different accounts of opaque reports. For both, the sentences used to report propositional attitudes or speech acts are semantically unambiguous. Hanks invokes context-sensitivity, Soames pragmatics, to account for the different interpretations. I raise problems and offer solutions. Their accounts succumb to the non-compositionality of transparent reports, and wrongly predict that all propositional relation reports have both transparent and opaque interpretations. Soames’s pragmatic enrichment account of the opaque interpretation is unfounded, and forces him to conclude that competent speakers do not know what the sentences they use mean. The notion of an “object-dependent” or “bare” proposition is both problematic and unnecessary. I offer a new account, on which propositional relation reports have the semantic ambiguity characteristic of idioms, with the transparent interpretation being highly but not completely compositional.

Language and Children's Understanding of Mental States

2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 69-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul L. Harris ◽  
Marc de Rosnay ◽  
Francisco Pons
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Language Skills ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Individual Development ◽  
Deaf Children ◽  
Promising Candidate ◽  
Normal Children ◽  
Pragmatic Enrichment

Children progress through various landmarks in their understanding of mind and emotion. They eventually understand that people's actions, utterances, and emotions are determined by their beliefs. Although these insights emerge in all normal children, individual children vary in their rates of progress. Four lines of research indicate that language and conversation play a role in individual development: (a) Children with advanced language skills are better at mental-state understanding than those without advanced language skills, (b) deaf children born into nonsigning families lag in mental-state understanding, and (c) exposure to maternal conversation rich in references to mental states promotes mental-state understanding, as do (d) experimental language-based interventions. Debate centers on the mechanism by which language and conversation help children's understanding of mental states. Three competing interpretations are evaluated here: lexical enrichment (the child gains from acquiring a rich mental-state vocabulary), syntactic enrichment (the child gains from acquiring syntactic tools for embedding one thought in another), and pragmatic enrichment (the child gains from conversations in which varying perspectives on a given topic are articulated). Pragmatic enrichment emerges as the most promising candidate.

Expletive Negation

2020 ◽  
pp. 254-268
Author(s):  
Denis Delfitto
Keyword(s):  
Side Effects ◽  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
The State ◽  
Incremental Analysis ◽  
Negative Concord ◽  
What Is Said ◽  
Pragmatic Enrichment ◽  
Temporal Clauses ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter provides the state-of-the-art around expletive negation (EN), by discussing: (i) the relationship between EN and negative concord; (ii) EN as a real negation; (iii) EN as a special formative linked to an additional evaluative/expressive layer in the semantics of language. Moreover, the chapter offers a potentially unifying analysis of EN in comparative, exclamative, and temporal clauses: EN as an operator of implicature denial. This approach derives the fact that EN is logically and compositionally independent from what is said from the fact that EN shifts the semantics of negation to the layer of implicated meaning. Some of the interpretive effects normally linked to the expressive/evaluative analysis of EN can be arguably derived as side-effects of this semantic analysis. The proposal advanced here has a number of implications regarding the relationship among morpho-syntax, pragmatic enrichment, and the non-incremental analysis of negation in theories of negation processing.

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