LINGUIST List 21.2790

Fri Jul 02 2010

Books: Pragmatics/Semantics: Zondervan

Editor for this issue: Maria Moreno-Rollins <marialinguistlist.org>

        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
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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 ofpragmatic meaning in natural language: scalar implicatures (SIs). A scalarimplicature is the inference that when a speaker uses a linguistic itemthat is on a scale with another item, the hearer concludes the sentencewith the stronger scale member does not hold. For instance the inferencesfrom 'It was okay' to 'It was not excellent' and from 'Some studentspassed' to 'Not all students passed' are scalar implicatures. It is widelyacknowledged that these inferences are context-dependent, yet little isknown about the properties of the context that determine their presence orabsence. This thesis aims to contribute to the filling of this gap byconsidering the relation between SIs and the contextual property ofinformation focus. Additionally, it addresses the psychological reality ofthe view that the exclusive reading of or, on which A or B means A or B butnot both, comes about by an SI. The thesis addresses these questionsthrough a set of 11 experiments, both off-line (questionnaires) and on-line(processing). Next to the relation between SIs and focus, these experimentsconsider relevance of the stronger scalar alternative, the processing costof SI-calculation, the assumption of speaker expertise and the relationbetween SIs and exhaustivity. The results support the prediction thatinformation focus affects SI-calculation. However, the array of data takentogether raise doubts about the view that the exclusive reading of or isthe result of a scalar implicature. The author discusses and teststheoretical insights from truth-conditional semantics, logic, pragmaticsand reasoning as well as insights and results from (experimental)psycholinguistics, so this dissertation should be of interest to scholarsin 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


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