Numerous Meanings
The Meaning of English Cardinals and the Legacy of Paul Grice
- 1st Edition, Volume 15 - August 23, 2005
- Latest edition
- Author: Bert Bultinck
- Language: English
Outlandish as it may seem to the uninitiated, the meaning of English cardinal numbers has been the object of many heated and fascinating debates. Notwithstanding the numerous… Read more
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Description
Description
Outlandish as it may seem to the uninitiated, the meaning of English cardinal numbers has been the object of many heated and fascinating debates. Notwithstanding the numerous important objections that have been formulated in the last three decades, the (neo-)Gricean, scalar account is still the standard semantic description of numerals. In this book, Bultinck writes the history of this implicature-driven approach and demonstrates that it suffers from methodological insecurity and postulates highly non-conventional meanings of numerals as their "literal meaning", while it confuses the level of lexical semantics with that of utterances and cannot deal with a large number of counter-examples. Relying on the results of an extensive corpus-based analysis, an alternative account of the meaning of English cardinals and the ways in which their interpretation is influenced by other linguistic elements is presented. As such, this analysis constitutes a prism that offers today’s linguist an iridescent history of one of the most fascinating, if often misconstrued, topics in contemporary meaning research: the conversational implicatures.
"Bert Bultinck's book presents rich empirical data, backed by sound theoretical understanding, which results in a strong challenge to standard neo-Gricean approaches and makes a valuable contribution to research on the semantics and pragmatics of number terms."
Robyn Carston, University College London, UK
"Bultinck's Numerous Meanings is a unique contribution to the semantics and pragmatics of cardinal numbers, taking Grice's theory of implicatures to its limits, and raising numerous and original questions about meaning along the way."
Jef Verschueren, University of Antwerp, Belgium
Readership
Readership
For advanced students and researchers in semantics and pragmatics; philosophers of language; and corpus linguists.
Table of contents
Table of contents
Introduction. The Gricean Theory of Implicatures. Introduction. Implicatures according to Paul Grice. Meaning. Logic and Conversation. Formalists and Informalists. Maxims and Implicatures. Rescuing logic in conversation (1): therefore. Rescuing logic in conversation (2): or. Rescuing logic in conversation (3): if ... then.
Conclusion. Implicatures according to neo-Griceans and critics. Versions of the Conversational Principles and their Indeterminacy. Tests of Conversational Implicatures. Formalizations. Scales.
The Projection Problem. The Architecture of Meaning
Consequences for the Analysis of Meaning. Three Decades of Gricean Numerals. Minimalism and Implicatures: Tradition and Evolution. Horn's Original Analysis. Existentialist Minimalism
Salience and Activation. Underspecification. Early Approaches and Formulations. Underspecification, Underdeterminacy and Enrichment. Marginal Positions: Punctual Semantics and Ambiguity
Summary and 'Absolute Value'. General Corpus Analysis of the Forms and Functions of English Cardinals. Prolegomenon: The English Lexical Category "Numeral". Semantics. Open - Closed Class
Syntax. Conclusion. Forms of Two. Adnominal and Pronominal Uses of Two. Analysis of the NP Containing Two. Restrictors. Complex Constructions.
Functions of Two: Corpus Analysis. Cardinal Two.
Two as a Label. Standard Examples. Marginal Labels: Counting the Seconds One Two Three. Number Two.
Clockwise: Two in Indications of Temporal Location.
Pronominal Two and Ellipsis. Standard Examples.
Elliptical Two as the Predicate of a Copula
Divide into Two. Degrees of Pronominality: What about you Two? Two as the Name of a Symbol. Mathematical Uses of Two. Discourse-Structural Two
Other uses of Two. Relationship between Adnominal Form and Cardinal Function. Degrees of Prominence of Cardinality. Domains of Use. A Special Case: Zero
Zero as Adnominal. Zero as Head. Comparison of Two and Zero. Conclusion. 'At Least N', 'Exactly N', 'at Most N' and 'Absolute Value' Readings.
Methodology. Absolute Values and 'Exactly N' Values of Two in N CN and Pronominal Uses. Increasing the Number of Positions - the Concept 'Absolute Value'.
'Absolute Value' and 'Exactly N' Readings of Two in the Corpus: a Continuum. Syntactic Function of the NP Containing Two. Two in Adverbial Phrases
Two in Direct Object Phrases. Two in Subject Phrases and Gradations of 'Absolute Value'. Two in Predicate Phrases and the "Existential There"-Effect. Hierarchy of Syntactic Functions. Comparison with Discourse Topic Theory: Van Kuppevelt (1996) and Scharten (1997). Other Determinants of Value Interpretation. Relative Strength of Factors Influencing Value Interpretation. Influence of Pronominality and Reduced Cardinality. Summary. 'At Least / More than N' and 'at Most / Less than N' uses of Two in the Corpus and the Influence of Modality. Neo-Gricean Arguments in the Corpus Analysis of Two
Defeasibility: the Cancellation and Suspension Tests. The Suspension Test. The Cancellation Test.
Redundancy. Negation. Conclusion. Small numbers, large numbers, round numbers and non-round numbers.
Ten. Twenty-two. One Thousand. Restrictors.
Survey of Restrictors: from 'More Than' to 'Less Than'. "Epistemic load". Approximativity and Exactness. Only and Just. Conclusion.
Conclusion. Implicatures according to neo-Griceans and critics. Versions of the Conversational Principles and their Indeterminacy. Tests of Conversational Implicatures. Formalizations. Scales.
The Projection Problem. The Architecture of Meaning
Consequences for the Analysis of Meaning. Three Decades of Gricean Numerals. Minimalism and Implicatures: Tradition and Evolution. Horn's Original Analysis. Existentialist Minimalism
Salience and Activation. Underspecification. Early Approaches and Formulations. Underspecification, Underdeterminacy and Enrichment. Marginal Positions: Punctual Semantics and Ambiguity
Summary and 'Absolute Value'. General Corpus Analysis of the Forms and Functions of English Cardinals. Prolegomenon: The English Lexical Category "Numeral". Semantics. Open - Closed Class
Syntax. Conclusion. Forms of Two. Adnominal and Pronominal Uses of Two. Analysis of the NP Containing Two. Restrictors. Complex Constructions.
Functions of Two: Corpus Analysis. Cardinal Two.
Two as a Label. Standard Examples. Marginal Labels: Counting the Seconds One Two Three. Number Two.
Clockwise: Two in Indications of Temporal Location.
Pronominal Two and Ellipsis. Standard Examples.
Elliptical Two as the Predicate of a Copula
Divide into Two. Degrees of Pronominality: What about you Two? Two as the Name of a Symbol. Mathematical Uses of Two. Discourse-Structural Two
Other uses of Two. Relationship between Adnominal Form and Cardinal Function. Degrees of Prominence of Cardinality. Domains of Use. A Special Case: Zero
Zero as Adnominal. Zero as Head. Comparison of Two and Zero. Conclusion. 'At Least N', 'Exactly N', 'at Most N' and 'Absolute Value' Readings.
Methodology. Absolute Values and 'Exactly N' Values of Two in N CN and Pronominal Uses. Increasing the Number of Positions - the Concept 'Absolute Value'.
'Absolute Value' and 'Exactly N' Readings of Two in the Corpus: a Continuum. Syntactic Function of the NP Containing Two. Two in Adverbial Phrases
Two in Direct Object Phrases. Two in Subject Phrases and Gradations of 'Absolute Value'. Two in Predicate Phrases and the "Existential There"-Effect. Hierarchy of Syntactic Functions. Comparison with Discourse Topic Theory: Van Kuppevelt (1996) and Scharten (1997). Other Determinants of Value Interpretation. Relative Strength of Factors Influencing Value Interpretation. Influence of Pronominality and Reduced Cardinality. Summary. 'At Least / More than N' and 'at Most / Less than N' uses of Two in the Corpus and the Influence of Modality. Neo-Gricean Arguments in the Corpus Analysis of Two
Defeasibility: the Cancellation and Suspension Tests. The Suspension Test. The Cancellation Test.
Redundancy. Negation. Conclusion. Small numbers, large numbers, round numbers and non-round numbers.
Ten. Twenty-two. One Thousand. Restrictors.
Survey of Restrictors: from 'More Than' to 'Less Than'. "Epistemic load". Approximativity and Exactness. Only and Just. Conclusion.
Product details
Product details
- Edition: 1
- Latest edition
- Volume: 15
- Published: August 23, 2005
- Language: English
About the author
About the author
BB
Bert Bultinck
Affiliations and expertise
Antwerp University Association, Belgium