Corpus Analysis and Lexical Pragmatics: An Overview

Lexical pragmatics studies the processes by which lexically encoded meanings are modified in use; well-studied examples include lexical narrowing, approximation and metaphorical extension. Relevance theorists have been trying to develop a unitary account on which narrowing, approximation and metaphorical extension are all explained in the same way. While there have been several corpus-based studies of metaphor and a few of hyperbole or approximation, there has been no attempt so far to test the unitary account using corpus data. This paper reports the results of a corpus-based investigation of lexical-pragmatic processes, and discusses the theoretical issues and challenges it raises

Word graphs: The third set

This is the third paper in a series of natural language processing in term of knowledge graphs. A word is a basic unit in natural language processing. This is why we study word graphs. Word graphs were already built for prepositions and adwords (including adjectives, adverbs and Chinese quantity words) in two other papers. In this paper, we propose the concept of the logic word and classify logic words into groups in terms of semantics and the way they are used in describing reasoning processes. A start is made with the building of the lexicon of logic words in terms of knowledge graphs

Reliable Words Third Person Pronouns in Indonesian News Reports

This article examines uses of Indonesian third person singular pronouns ia and dia in news reports. It takes as its departure point the general account of the pronouns which specifies that ia can occur only in subject position, while dia can occur in subject or object position. The article shows that, although both pronouns can occur in subject position, they differ distributionally and functionally. Ia occurs almost three times as frequently as dia and predominates in subject position, while dia occurs mostly in non-subject position. Ia is primarily used to convey the notion that the referent is a reliable and authoritative source of information and to focus on the referent as an agent or protagonist who is initiating or performing some action or a series of actions. By contrast, dia tends to be selected for contexts in which the referent is presented as a speaker who is elaborating on what has been said previously rather than introducing a new point. The predominance of ia in news report accords with its characterization as a pronoun strongly associated with formal registers

The Prometheus Challenge Redux

Following up on its predecessor in this Journal, the article defends philosophy as a guide to making and analyzing art; identifies Cubist solutions to the Prometheus Challenge, including a novel analysis of Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon; defines a new concept of aesthetic attitude; proves the compatibility of Prometheus Challenge artworks with logic; and explains why Plato would have welcomed such artworks in his ideal state

Black & Davidson on Metaphor

Most theories of metaphor look at what occurs inside a metaphorical phrase and posit a shift in meaning in the metaphorical words. This includes the classic “Models and Metaphor,” by Max Black, who distinguishes between the literal words of the phrase and the metaphorical words. On this view, the two interact in such a way that the meanings of the metaphorical words change. In another view, Donald Davidson takes a radical stance in his “What Metaphors Mean” to assert that the words in a metaphor mean nothing other than their original, literal meaning. Both theories suffer from problems: Black fails to explain how the metaphorical words change in meaning. Davidson, on the other hand, while succeeding in refuting most of the “other meaning” theories, only weakly suggests “use” of metaphor to explain its power. In this paper, I will clarify the two respective theories and attempt to reconcile or fuse them. We will find that Black looks to the language itself and finds a shift in meaning, while Davidson asserts that meaning stays literal, and we must instead look at what occurs between the speaker and hearer. An examination of Davidson’s later theory of interpretation applied to Black’s theory of metaphor will clarify Davidson’s ‘use’ as well as allow for literal meaning to stay in metaphor

Metaphor, religious language and religious experience

Is it possible to talk about God without either misrepresentation or failing to assert anything of significance? The article begins by reviewing how, in attempting to answer this question, traditional theories of religious language have failed to sidestep both potential pitfalls adequately. After arguing that recently developed theories of metaphor seem better able to shed light on the nature of religious language, it considers the claim that huge areas of our language and, consequently, of our experience are shaped by metaphors. Finally, it considers some of the more significant implications of this claim for our understanding of both religious language and religious experience

The Translation of Indonesian Reduplication Into English

Every language has its own way to communicate its expression. Indonesian has reduplication such as pagi-pagi, cantik-cantik, and jalan-jalan. The English translation of this reduplication is not *morning-morning, *beautiful-beautiful, and*walking-walking respectively. In this case, the translators should make an adjustment when they transfer the message of the Indonesian reduplication into English. This study investigates how Indonesian university students, teachers, and professionals translate the Indonesian reduplications into English. It explores the meaning and structure resulted from the translation. The participants are university students, lecturers and employees. They are given questionnaires in which they translate the Indonesian reduplication into English. The analysis involves the morphological, syntactic and semantic aspects of the translation, as well as the deviations that possibly occur in the translation

Requests in corner shop transactions in Ecuadorian Andean and coastal Spanish

Book synopsis: This collection of papers is designed to establish variational pragmatics. This new field is situated at the interface of pragmatics and dialectology and aims at systematically investigating the effect of macro-social pragmatic variation on language in action. As such, it challenges the widespread assumption in the area of pragmatics that language communities are homogeneous and also addresses the current research gap in sociolinguistics for variation on the pragmatic level. The introductory chapter establishes the rationale for studying variational pragmatics as a separate field of inquiry, systematically sketches the broader theoretical framework and presents a framework for further analysis. The papers which follow are located within this framework. They present empirical variational pragmatic research focusing on regional varieties of pluricentric languages. Speech acts and other discourse phenomena are addressed and analysed in a number of regional varieties of Dutch, English, French, German and Spanish. The seminal nature of this volume, its empirical orientation and the extensive bibliography make this book of interest to both researchers and students in pragmatics and sociolinguistics

What metalinguistic negotiations can't do

Philosophers of language and metaethicists are concerned with persistent normative and evaluative disagreements – how can we explain persistent intelligible disagreements in spite of agreement over the described facts? Tim Sundell recently argued that evaluative aesthetic and personal taste disputes could be explained as metalinguistic negotiations – conversations where interlocutors negotiate how best to use a word relative to a context. I argue here that metalinguistic negotiations are neither necessary nor sufficient for genuine evaluative and normative disputes to occur. A comprehensive account of value talk requires stronger metanormative commitments than metalinguistic negotiations afford