La interpretación de la conjunción disyuntiva “or” sigue produciendo resultados interesantes, sobre todo en su interacción con los fenómenos de escalaridad. En particular, la escalaridad y los efectos inducidos por la máxima de cantidad permiten explicar por ejemplo la interpretación exclusiva de “o”:
Resumen: If a speaker chooses one scalar term (e.g., three, or) rather than a stronger one (e.g., four, and), listeners may assume that the speaker lacked evidence for the stronger claim, giving rise to strengthened meanings like exactly three or exclusive or. Three experiments investigate the circumstances under which or is interpreted as exclusive or. The first tests the hypothesis that accenting a scalar term increases the number of scalar implicatures that are computed. The second tests the hypothesis that fewer scalar implicatures are drawn in Downward Entailing (DE) contexts than in non-DE contexts, not confounded with potential focus effects as in a previous study on the issue. The third study examines the role of DE versus non-DE contexts in a selfpaced reading study. The results indicate that both focus and DE vs. non-DE context affects interpretation of or as predicted, and that the latter appears as an on-line effect.
Dos trabajos recientes sobre implicaturas escalares y disyunción que aparecen en la versión en línea de Linguistics & Philosophy:
- Katzir, Roni (2008): Structurally-defined alternatives. Linguistics & Philosophy, Online First.
Abstract: Scalar implicatures depend on alternatives in order to avoid the symmetry problem. I argue for a structure-sensitive characterization of these alternatives: the alternatives for a structure are all those structures that are at most as complex as the original one. There have been claims in the literature that complexity is irrelevant for implicatures and that the relevant condition is the semantic notion of monotonicity. I provide new data that pose a challenge to the use of monotonicity and that support the structure-sensitive definition. I show that what appeared to be a problem for the complexity approach is overcome once an appropriate notion of complexity is adopted, and that upon closer inspection, the argument in favor of monotonicity turns out to be an argument against it and in favor of the complexity approach.
- Singh, Raj (2008): On the interpretation of disjunction: asymmetric, incremental, and eager for inconsistency. Linguistics & Philosophy, Online First.
Abstract: Hurford’s Constraint (Hurford, Foundations of Language, 11, 409–411, 1974) states that a disjunction is infelicitous if its disjuncts stand in an entailment relation: {\#}John was born in Paris or in France. Gazdar (Pragmatics, Academic Press, NY, 1979) observed that scalar implicatures can obviate the constraint. For instance, sentences of the form (A or B) or (Both Aand B) are felicitous due to the exclusivity implicature of the first disjunct: A or B implicates `not (A and B)’. Chierchia, Fox, and Spector (Handbook of semantics, 2008) use the obviation of Hurford’s Constraint in these cases to argue for a theory of local implicature. I present evidence indicating that the constraint needs to be modified in two ways. First, implicatures can obviate Hurford’s Constraint only in earlier disjuncts, not later ones: #(Both A and B) or (A or B). Second, the constraint rules out not only disjuncts that stand in an entailment relation, but also disjuncts that are even mutually consistent: #John is from Russia or Asia. I propose to make sense of these facts by providing an incremental evaluation procedure which checks that each new disjunct to the right is inconsistent with the information to its left, before the disjunct can be strengthened by local implicature.
Todo un número especial de Journal of Semantics dedicado a MODALIDAD Y EVIDENCIALIDAD. El índice es el siguiente:
- Takao Gunji, Stefan Kaufmann, and Yukinori Takubo
Modality and Evidentiality
J Semantics 2008 25: 221-227; doi:10.1093/jos/ffn006
- Yurie Hara
Evidentiality of Discourse Items and Because-Clauses
J Semantics 2008 25: 229-268; doi:10.1093/jos/ffn001
- James Isaacs and Kyle Rawlins
Conditional Questions
J Semantics 2008 25: 269-319; doi:10.1093/jos/ffn003
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Tim Fernando
Branching from Inertia Worlds
J Semantics 2008 25: 321-344; doi:10.1093/jos/ffn002
La Universidad Estatal de Ohio organiza un workshop sobre Acomodación. La información relevante esta disponible en línea, así como una magnífica página con diverso material (resources).
Yo no podré asistir porque me caso en esas fechas, pero los organizadores ofrecen becas para estudiantes de doctorado interesados. En cualquier caso, la inscripción es recomendable porque proporcionan material inédito.
El servicio de
Consultas Lingüísticas de la RAE ofrece la siguiente respuesta a la consulta sobre cómo llamar a la persona que se dedica a la Pragmática:
Los adjetivos pragmático y pragmatista se emplean ya, también como sustantivos de persona, con el sentido de ‘relativo a la pragmática’ o ‘partidario del pragmatismo’. La denominación *pragmatólogo no resulta muy afortunada para referirse al ‘especialista en pragmática’, dado que el sustantivo que designa la disciplina científica no se ha formado sobre el sufijo -logía (*pragmatología). Más adecuado sería emplear la voz pragmaticista, con el sufijo -ista, que forma derivados nominales que designan personas que ejercen una profesión u oficio. La forma *pragmaticalista carece de justificación desde el punto de vista morfológico.
Yo me decanto por pragmaticisita por razones obvias. ¿Alguna sugerencia?
