Pragmatic Aspects of Scalar Modifiers
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A01=Osamu Sawada
Author_Osamu Sawada
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=CFG
Category=NL-CF
COP=United Kingdom
Discount=15
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Format=BC
Format_Paperback
HMM=235
IMPN=Oxford University Press
ISBN13=9780198714231
Language_English
NWS=69
PA=Available
PD=20171221
POP=Oxford
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
PUB=Oxford University Press
SMM=15
SN=Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics
Subject=Linguistics
WG=412
WMM=157
Product details
- ISBN 9780198714231
- Format: Paperback
- Weight: 412g
- Dimensions: 157 x 235 x 15mm
- Publication Date: 07 Dec 2017
- Publisher: Oxford University Press
- Publication City/Country: Oxford, GB
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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This volume examines the meaning of scalar modifiers - expressions such as more than, a bit, and much - from the standpoint of the interface between semantics and pragmatics. In natural language, scalar expressions such as comparatives, intensifiers, and minimizers are used for measuring an object or event at a semantic level. However, cross-linguistically scalar modifiers can often be used to express a range of subjective feelings or discourse pragmatic information at the level of conventional implicature (CI). For example, in English more than anything can signal the degree of importance of the given utterance, and in Japanese the minimizer chotto 'a bit' can weaken the degree of imposition of the speech act. In this book, Osamu Sawada draws on data from Japanese and a range of other languages to explore the dual-use phenomenon of scalar modifiers: he claims that although semantic scalar meanings and CI scalar meanings are logically different, the relationship between the two makes it crucial to examine them both together.
The volume provides a new perspective on the semantic-pragmatics interface, and will be of interest to researchers and students of Japanese linguistics, semantics and pragmatics, and theoretical linguistics more generally.
Osamu Sawada received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2010, and is currently Associate Professor of Linguistics at Mie University. His main research areas are semantics, pragmatics, and syntax, and he is particularly interested in scalar meanings, implicatures, presuppositions, the interaction between grammar and context, and language change. His work has appeared in journals including Journal of Pragmatics, Journal of East Asian Linguistics, Natural Language Semantics, and Linguistics & Philosophy.
