LINGUIST List 7.866

Mon Jun 10 1996

Misc: Textbooks on pragmatics, Not really (re: 7.793)

Editor for this issue: Ann Dizdar <dizdartam2000.tamu.edu>

Directory

1. "Beatriz Juacaba", Sum: Textbooks on Pragmatics
2. Charles Rowe, re: not really (7.793)

Dear linguists,

Georgia Green sent me a message with the information that a second
edition of her book Pragmatics and natural language understanding will
be published this fall (thanks for the good news!!!). Also, I would
like to thank Gisela Redeker for her suggestion of a new title, not
included in my previous posting: CLARK, H. H., (1996). Using language,
CUP.

Beatriz
Georgetown University
Washington, D.C.

The only way I know of to avoid the morphologization of "not really"
is to insert an intermediate modifying adverb:

"He's not just REAL (*really) sick"

means 'He's not, of course, EXTREMELY sick', with the implication that
he is certainly under the weather to some significant measure, in the
mind of the speaker.

This usage may be a Southernism, given the restriction on the
morphology (*really), or at least conservative. Either way, the
insertion of the intermediate modifier "just" allows for the
restoration of the original compositional meaning of the phrase.




C. Rowe
roweemail.unc.edu