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Totemo level 1111/30/2022 Two types of pragmatic scalar modifiers are proposed: a higher-level pragmatic scalar modifier, which utilizes an implicit pragmatic scale, and a lower-level pragmatic scalar modifier, which recycles the scale of an at-issue gradable predicate. The similarities and differences between at-issue and CI scalar meanings are analyzed using a multidimensional composition system (Potts 2005 McCready 2010). Through a detailed analysis of the semantics and pragmatics of comparatives with indeterminate pronouns, positive polarity minimizers, intensifiers, and expectation-reversal adverbs in Japanese and other languages, the book shows that scalarity is utilized not just for measuring a thing/event in the semantic level, but also for expressing various kinds of pragmatic information, including politeness, priority of utterance, the speaker's attitude, and unexpectedness, at the level of conventional implicature (CI). This book investigates pragmatic aspects of scalar modifiers. I shall explore each relation in turn and situate it within Frege's - and our - understanding of the different levels of meaning in natural language. While two of the relations assumed by Frege, Voraussetzung (presupposition) and Nebengedanke (lit., 'side-thought'), foreshadow the Strawsonian notion of (semantic) presupposition for singular and quantified expressions respectively, a third Fregean relation, here dubbed Andeutung, directly anticipates the Gricean notion of conventional implicature. In his analysis of the semantics of natural language, Frege, especially in "über Sinn und Bedeutung" (1892) and "Der Gedanke" (1918-19), investigated a variety of aspects of meaning that - in the terminology of modern pragmatic theory - do not constitute part of what is said. While this theoretical construct has become controversial of late (Bach 1999 consigns it to a chimerical status, while Potts 2005 attempts a partial rehabilitation, as we shall see below), the positing of material which does not affect the truth conditions of the primary asserted proposition has had a long if sometimes difficult history. The theoretical implications of this paper are that there is a natural extension from semantic comparison to expressive comparison and that there is a type in natural language that can be called an ‘indirect expressive’, as opposed to ‘direct expressives’ like bastard and man (Potts, The logic of conventional implicatures, 2005, 2007a McCready, Linguist Philos 31:671–724, 2009 35:243–283, 2012).įor Grice ( 1989), a conventional implicature C associated with an expression E manifests the following two definitional properties: (i) by virtue of being conventional, C constitutes a non-cancelable aspect of the meaning of E, and (ii) by virtue of being an implicature, C's truth or falsity has no affect on the truth conditions of E. I argue that the speaker’s negative evaluation of the utterance situation in question comes from the large gap between the expected degree and the current degree. I argue that similarly to the degree motto, the negative motto is a comparative morpheme, but unlike the degree motto it compares a current situation and an expected situation at the level of conventional implicature (CI)/expressive. On the other hand, in the so-called ‘negative use’ it conveys the speaker’s attitude (often negative) toward the utterance situation. In the degree use, motto (typically) compares two individuals and denotes that there is a large gap between the target and a given standard with a norm-related presupposition. The Japanese comparative adverb motto has two different uses.
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