Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics which studies the ways in which context contributes to meaning.
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Are deictic pronouns at all apparent in written language?
Considering the nature of deixis, I have trouble coming up with written examples where the pronoun is of a deictic nature, other than quotes from speech etc. Or maybe I have misunderstood the meaning ...
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1answer
253 views
Correlation between politeness of a culture and its languages
In the question Is there any reason why English doesn’t add respectful words in every sentence? that was asking why there's more respectful language in Korean and Japanese compared to English, the ...
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3answers
309 views
What does it mean if a person says, “I think” a lot
When I speak or write I tend not to speak in absolutes. I generally use phrases like "I think" or "I don't think" a lot. Further, I usually qualify my statements with words like "generally" or ...
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5answers
257 views
What divides semantics from pragmatics?
To my understanding... Semantics is the raw meaning and connotations a word carries on it's own and pragmatics is the context-dependent meaning a word holds.
Is this accurate? Can anyone explain it ...
3
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1answer
105 views
Name for rhetoric expressing a two contradictory meanings in one sentence?
I am looking at finding the name for the rhetoric style which uses two contradictory statements, one positive and the other negative, with the first seemingly giving a sense of positiveness or ...
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0answers
47 views
Historical changes from 'not yet' to 'not again' and vice-versa
A two part question. Are there attested historical changes whereby a construction C in some language means 'not yet', and then C changes in meaning so that it means 'not again' at a later time (or ...
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2answers
134 views
What strategies for efficiency are adopted by languages with minimal phonemic inventories?
As the size of a phonemic inventory decreases, the information rate allowed by the inventory should likewise decrease. So are there any (semantico-)pragmatic or morphosyntactic strategies that ...
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1answer
62 views
measuring relative importance/social proximity of an addressee based on length of written explanation in letters with multiple addressees
I have a corpus of personal letters in which writers explain a tough decision to multiple addressees, each in its own section/paragraph of the letter (for the most part).
I wonder if anybody has ...
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1answer
175 views
Response to 'Thanking' Speech Acts?
Just wondering if anyone is familiar with any research that touches on this. It seems to be a largely untapped topic, other than Wooh-yun Jung's (1994) work.
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2answers
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The meaning of “what”?
"What" is defined grammatically as an interrogative pronoun
... used interrogatively in asking for the specification of an identity, quantity, quality, etc. (Wiktionary)
In dictionaries, ...
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0answers
100 views
Reference request: ways of indicating disagreement
There are lots of ways to indicate you disagree with some aspect of an utterance. I'm thinking here of the spectrum that includes "No, not-X," "Well, not-X," "Hey, wait a minute! Not-X!" "Yes, you're ...
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4answers
695 views
Why are certain there-sentences infelicitous in English?
The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language states that the first three of the following four excerpts are semantically or pragmatically anomalous (to give that term some context, it cites We ...
