Almost forever
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Laurence R. Horn
Abstract
The division of labor between semantic and pragmatic contributions of almost and other proximatives has long been controversial. A watershed in this dispute is Sadock’s (1981) proposal that I almost won only conversationally implicates, rather than entailing, I didn’t win. Neither this “radical pragmatic” line nor a pure entailment account covers the full range of data, including the non-cancelability of the polar component and the distribution of polarity items. This gap prompts the construct of assertoric inertia (Horn 2002a), exploiting the distinction between what is entailed and what is asserted. I buttress that approach here with additional arguments, address the role of other semantic and pragmatic factors, and revisit the viability of assertoric inertia in the light of other recent work.
Abstract
The division of labor between semantic and pragmatic contributions of almost and other proximatives has long been controversial. A watershed in this dispute is Sadock’s (1981) proposal that I almost won only conversationally implicates, rather than entailing, I didn’t win. Neither this “radical pragmatic” line nor a pure entailment account covers the full range of data, including the non-cancelability of the polar component and the distribution of polarity items. This gap prompts the construct of assertoric inertia (Horn 2002a), exploiting the distinction between what is entailed and what is asserted. I buttress that approach here with additional arguments, address the role of other semantic and pragmatic factors, and revisit the viability of assertoric inertia in the light of other recent work.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- List of contributors ix
- Introduction xiii
- Almost forever 3
- Sadock and the Performadox 23
- Expressing regret and avowing belief 35
- A story of Jerry and Bob 59
- Conventionalization in indirect speech acts 77
- Pseudo-apologies in the news 93
- Towards an intonational-illocutionary interface 107
- Atkan Aleut “unclitic” pronouns and definiteness 125
- Nominalization affixes and multi-modularity of word formation 143
- No more phology! 163
- Wait’ll (you hear) the next one 175
- Aleut case matters 193
- English derived nominals in three frameworks 213
- Out of control 229
- An automodular perspective on the frozenness of pseudoclefts, and vice versa 243
- Negation as structure building in a home sign system 261
- Constraining mismatch in grammar and in sentence comprehension 279
- Evidence for grammatical multi-modularity from a corpus of non-native essays 299
- Autolexical Grammar and language processing 315
- Topic index 337
- Name index 339
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- List of contributors ix
- Introduction xiii
- Almost forever 3
- Sadock and the Performadox 23
- Expressing regret and avowing belief 35
- A story of Jerry and Bob 59
- Conventionalization in indirect speech acts 77
- Pseudo-apologies in the news 93
- Towards an intonational-illocutionary interface 107
- Atkan Aleut “unclitic” pronouns and definiteness 125
- Nominalization affixes and multi-modularity of word formation 143
- No more phology! 163
- Wait’ll (you hear) the next one 175
- Aleut case matters 193
- English derived nominals in three frameworks 213
- Out of control 229
- An automodular perspective on the frozenness of pseudoclefts, and vice versa 243
- Negation as structure building in a home sign system 261
- Constraining mismatch in grammar and in sentence comprehension 279
- Evidence for grammatical multi-modularity from a corpus of non-native essays 299
- Autolexical Grammar and language processing 315
- Topic index 337
- Name index 339
