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From Utterances to Speech Acts

By Mikhail Kissine

"Kissine offers a new theory of speech acts which is philosophically sophisticated and builds on work in cognitive science, formal semantics, and linguistic typology. This highly readable, brilliant essay is a major contribution to the field."

--François Recanati, Institut Jean-Nicod

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Summary Details


Query:   Expressions Similar to Hebrew 'bixlal'
Author:  Hagit Migron
Submitter Email:  click here to access email
Linguistic LingField(s):   General Linguistics
Pragmatics
Semantics

Summary:   Regarding query: http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-268.html#1

Deal linguists,

Several weeks ago I requested data on lexical items that are similar to
Hebrew 'bixlal'in their range of meanings. I got very many helpful
responses, which are summarized below.

'Bixlal' has the following five meanings (See original posting for a more
detailed presentation):
A) 'At all': hu lo nexmad bixlal (He is not nice at all)
B) 'in general': hu bixlal nexmad (He is nice in general)
C) 'even': hu bixlal xaver shelxa? (Is he even your friend?)
D) 'anyway': ma ata roce bixlal? (What do you want, anyway?)
E) 'actually': ze lo shulxan, ze bixlal kise (It's not a table, it's
actually a chair)

According to the responses I recieved, the following languages have lexical
items similar to 'bixlal':

Russian: 'voobshche' Meanings A, B, C, D, E
Polish: 'w ogole' Meanings A, B, C, D, E
Slovene: 'sploh' Meanings A, B, C, D, E
Serbian: 'oupste' Meanings A, B, C, D
Czech: 'vubec' Meanings A, B, C, D
German: 'überhaupt' Meanings A, B, C, D, E
Hungarian: 'egyaltalan' Meanings A, B, C, D

Japanese: mattaku Meanings A, B
Dutch: helemaal Meanings A, B
Irish English: at all Meanings A, B
(This combination of readings (A+B) is commonly produced by items meaning
'totally/completely' which can take either wide or narrow scope with
respect to negation, to produce readings like 'completely true' vs.
'completely untrue'='not true at all')

Additional items mentioned were Yiddish 'bixlal', Itlian 'mica', Swedish
'överhuvudtaget', Danish 'overhovedet' and Norwegian 'overhodet'.

I wish to thank all the people who responded:
Hana Skoumalova, Stefan Dyla, Fay Wouk, Yuri Koryakov, Ora Matushansky,
Asya Pereltsvaig, Thorsten Schröter, Konrad Szczesniak, Tamas Biro, Sarah
Bunin Benor, Donka Torov,Annabel Harrison,Agnes Sandor, Ghil'ad Zuckermann,
Caren Brinckmann, Wayne Leman, Laurence Horn, Remy Viredaz, Kim Schulte,
Hana Skoumalova, Ella Earp-Lynch, Galina Gordishevsky, Timur Maisak, Pius
ten Hacken, Hyoungbae Lee, Susanne Riehemann, Olga Kagan.


I will be happy to recieve any additions / corrections, and any other
information on words that combine a ''universal-like'' and
''existntial-like'' meaning (except 'any' and its correlates). My e-mail:
msaustin@mscc.huji.ac.il

LL Issue: 16.999
Date Posted: 02-Apr-2005
Original Query: Read original query


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