14
votes
Accepted
What do "titles" and "Beijing" stand for?
The word "titles" here is being used to mean books, which could be considered an instance of synecdoche (a type of metonymy where a part of a thing stands for the whole of the thing—a title ...
- 69.5k
7
votes
How do languages with negative concord express the actual negation of negative polarity items?
First off, let's take a broader look at multiple negation. Van der Wouden (1994a) describes four different classes of how multiple negation can be interpreted:
double negation (DN), e.g. Standard ...
- 7,626
6
votes
What is the difference between an implicature and a presupposition
The standard definition, as in the one you'll come across in introductory semantics classes, is that presuppositions have to be true, while implicatures are probably true.
For example, imagine that I ...
- 69.5k
5
votes
To what extent does this image accurately express the modularity of linguistic units?
I find it more accurate to see the world as follows:
IMO it's not very accuate to depict semantics as an extension of syntax. There is a crucial difference in what phonology, morphology and syntax do ...
- 6,601
5
votes
Accepted
What is the meaning difference between have+V versus bare V?
There's lots of work on the semantics of the English perfect constructions. A recentish (2002) paper by Kiparsky which could get you started is here.
- 11k
5
votes
Accepted
What is the relation among connotation, semantics, and pragmatics?
The study of meaning is usually divided into two sub-areas, semantics and pragmatics, where semantics is about literal, denotative meaning (looking only at the linguistic form) and pragmatics is about ...
- 83.4k
4
votes
Is the usage of sarcasm or irony dependent on the language and its structure?
Short answer: There are probably no languages "which because of their structure do not allow for the use of sarcasm or irony" since much sarcasm doesn't depend on certain features/structures. But it ...
- 187
4
votes
How does a field linguist record rare, unknown features of an undocumented language? Is it likely for him/her to miss the details?
I got some money from one of my teachers (Cathy Callahan) to drive out to California to do some field work on Yawelmani (a well-documented American Indian language). But the only Yawelmani speaker I ...
- 12.5k
4
votes
Why did Grice claim that the implicature is not “a part of what is said”?
Grice claims that implicature is separate from what is said, since it can only come from a surrounding context: sarcasm, for example, can't be understood in a vacuum. Others say that the dichotomy ...
- 69.5k
4
votes
To what extent does this image accurately express the modularity of linguistic units?
It represents something similar to “made up of”, though more accurately, it means “logically depends on, when analyzing”. It is the logical onion of classical taxonomic analysis – you would be ...
- 83.4k
4
votes
What is the meaning difference between have+V versus bare V?
The classic statement of the meanings of the perfect construction is McCawley, “Tense and time reference in English”, in Langendoen & Fillmore, Studies in linguistic semantics, 1971. (McCawley ...
- 1,500
4
votes
Pragmatics Wastebasket
"Pragmatics wastebasket" may refer to the view that there is no legitimate field of pragmatics, but rather calling a phenomenon "pragmatic" is just used by some grammarians as an excuse for not giving ...
- 12.5k
4
votes
Accepted
Have pronoun introductions spread to non-English-speaking communities/languages?
A gender-neutral pronoun, hen, has recently found its way into the official dictionary of Swedish. It is a loanword from Finnish, proposed in 1966 and popularised in the 2000s. Transfeminism seems to ...
- 1,779
4
votes
Accepted
Are implications said to be "accommodated" by listeners?
An utterance like Isn't Henry staying at his girlfriend's? presupposes, as you say, the proposition Henry has a girlfriend: its felicity depends on that proposition being part of the common ground ...
- 11k
4
votes
What is the difference between an implicature and a presupposition
The question is a bit like asking "What's the difference between a wardrobe and a chair" - well, they are just two different things...
A presupposition is, simply put, something that must be ...
- 6,601
4
votes
Can an inference be be an implicature and also a presupposition?
There are a lot of conflicting definitions of "implicature" out there (and a few of "presupposition"), but the Linguistics 101 version is usually that implicatures can be cancelled ...
- 69.5k
3
votes
How does a field linguist record rare, unknown features of an undocumented language? Is it likely for him/her to miss the details?
It is possible to record rare features of a language because it is possible to encounter such a feature, and it is possible to record. It is up to the linguist to take appropriate note of the feature, ...
- 83.4k
3
votes
Pragmatics Wastebasket
Metaphorically, the "pragmatics wastebasket" is where you toss things that are (just) pragmatics rather than (real) linguistics.1 The implication is that linguistics is amenable to scientific study, ...
- 2,645
3
votes
Why did Grice claim that the implicature is not “a part of what is said”?
Grice was writing in the 1950s and '60s and he was a philosopher, not a linguist. Thus his views of "what is said" are not linguistic ones, and indeed they're not all that clear to his readers.
There ...
- 10.1k
3
votes
Accepted
Different ways to interpret stressed words in a sentence
Stress in English often marks Focus, often some kind of contrastive focus.
Your paraphrase is what would be meant by a neutral version of that sentence with no emphasised words.
John is easy to ...
- 6,337
3
votes
Accepted
Difference between sociolinguistics and pragmatics
Sociolinguistics, broadly defined, is the study of language use across demographic lines.
It's interested in how this group speaks differently from that group. Gender, socioeconomic status, age, ...
- 2,570
3
votes
Can an indefinite article trigger a presupposition?
While the definite article is assumed to exhibit both an existence and a uniqueness presupposition, combining to an "exactly one" presupposition:
I saw the bear yesterday
→ There is a bear
→ ...
- 6,601
3
votes
Accepted
Ambiguous active/passive interpretations
The term passive is a grammatical one relating to syntax and morphology. It does not relate to a verb having a 'passive' meaning. The English metalinguistic term passive is unfortunate and ...
- 4,118
3
votes
What do "titles" and "Beijing" stand for?
Beijing: PLACE FOR TIME
titles: In fact, I don't see metonymy here, titles is just the standard jargon for "kinds of books" (the bookshop can hold more than one copy of a certain title, so ...
- 31.1k
3
votes
Clarifications on exophora
The use of immediate in that definition is not needed and a little misleading. For example, Diessel (1999) defines exophoric demonstratives as referring to "entities in the situation surrounding ...
- 4,840
2
votes
Why is "then" deictic?
It is fairly possible to make an account of the anaphoric words as deictic (or indexical; I consider deixis and indicality plainly synonymous). I personally share this approach. In my formulation (...
- 2,679
2
votes
Difference between discourse analysis and pragmatics
Considering the example given in user3072's answer:
Discourse Analysis: When we want to know that "what time" refers to what, it could be answered by discourse analysis. Only by looking at ...
- 21
2
votes
Can an indefinite article trigger a presupposition?
I think perhaps with an qualifying adjective.
"Are you a good mother?" Presupposes that the referent of "you" is, in fact, a mother.
- 89
2
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Why did Grice claim that the implicature is not “a part of what is said”?
If you use a "logical" definition of but and therefore, the sentences could be true even if the "conventional implicatures" were false.
In the context of classical logic, "but" and "and" seem to have ...
- 18.7k
2
votes
Accepted
Can one avoid using the notion of meaning when defining syntax and pragmatics?
In generative grammars, as far as possible the syntax is designed to be automatic and meaning-free. Jim McCawley used to distinguish syntax from the cluster of topics involving "meaning" ...
- 10.1k
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