LINGUIST List 21.2790 Fri Jul 02 2010 Books: Pragmatics/Semantics: Zondervan Editor for this issue: Maria Moreno-Rollins <marialinguistlist.org> Links to the websites of all LINGUIST's supporting publishers are available at the end of this issue. Directory         1.    Mariëtte Bonenkamp, Scalar Implicatures or Focus: An Experimental Approach: Zondervan Message 1: Scalar Implicatures or Focus: An Experimental Approach: Zondervan Date: 15-Jun-2010 From: Mariëtte Bonenkamp <lotuu.nl> Subject: Scalar Implicatures or Focus: An Experimental Approach: Zondervan E-mail this message to a friend Title: Scalar Implicatures or Focus: An Experimental Approach Published: 2010 Publisher: Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics / Landelijke - LOT                 http://www.lotpublications.nl/ Author: Arjen Zondervan Paperback: ISBN: 9789460930317 Pages: Price: U.K. £ 31.87 Abstract: This dissertation is about one of the most robust and widespread types of pragmatic meaning in natural language: scalar implicatures (SIs). A scalar implicature is the inference that when a speaker uses a linguistic item that is on a scale with another item, the hearer concludes the sentence with the stronger scale member does not hold. For instance the inferences from 'It was okay' to 'It was not excellent' and from 'Some students passed' to 'Not all students passed' are scalar implicatures. It is widely acknowledged that these inferences are context-dependent, yet little is known about the properties of the context that determine their presence or absence. This thesis aims to contribute to the filling of this gap by considering the relation between SIs and the contextual property of information focus. Additionally, it addresses the psychological reality of the view that the exclusive reading of or, on which A or B means A or B but not both, comes about by an SI. The thesis addresses these questions through a set of 11 experiments, both off-line (questionnaires) and on-line (processing). Next to the relation between SIs and focus, these experiments consider relevance of the stronger scalar alternative, the processing cost of SI-calculation, the assumption of speaker expertise and the relation between SIs and exhaustivity. The results support the prediction that information focus affects SI-calculation. However, the array of data taken together raise doubts about the view that the exclusive reading of or is the result of a scalar implicature. The author discusses and tests theoretical insights from truth-conditional semantics, logic, pragmatics and reasoning as well as insights and results from (experimental) psycholinguistics, so this dissertation should be of interest to scholars in any of these domains. Linguistic Field(s): Pragmatics                             Semantics Written In: English (eng ) See this book announcement on our website: http://linguistlist.org/pubs/books/get-book.cfm?BookID=48860 Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue -------------------------- Major Supporters -------------------------- Brill http://www.brill.nl Cambridge Scholars Publishing http://www.c-s-p.org Cambridge University Press http://us.cambridge.org Cascadilla Press http://www.cascadilla.com/ Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd http://www.continuumbooks.com De Gruyter Mouton http://www.degruyter.com/mouton Edinburgh University Press http://www.eup.ed.ac.uk/ Elsevier Ltd http://www.elsevier.com/linguistics Emerald Group Publishing Limited http://www.emeraldinsight.com/ European Language Resources Association - ELRA http://www.elra.info. 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