Towards naturalness scales of pragmatic complexity
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Marianne Kilani-Schoch
,
Fernando Sánchez Miret
Abstract
This paper is an attempt to handle pragmatic complexity within the framework of Natural Linguistics. Specifically it aims at building two naturalness scales of the complexity of pragmatic inferences based on the naturalness parameters of trans-parency–opacity and of biuniqueness–ambiguity, illustrated mainly with French examples. The scales are complementary: transparency–opacity deals with hierarchized meanings, biuniqueness–ambiguity with exclusive alternative meanings.
Pragmatic complexity is intended here as a function of the number and types of inferences or inferential steps included in the description of an utterance meaning. It is defined quantitatively and qualitatively and converges with cognitive complexity. The scales distinguish phenomena that are to varying degrees opaque or ambiguous (indirect, elliptic or non-literal) according to whether there is flouting or violation of a Gricean maxim and how this takes place.
The number of cotextual and/or contextual dimensions as well as variable cog-nitive operations, modes of reasoning and meaning relations are taken as measures of pragmatic complexity.
The paper also discusses the relation between complexity and markedness. This issue reveals a conflict between the perspectives of speaker and hearer.
© de Gruyter 2011
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Part one. Complexity in Natural Linguistics. Guest edited by Wolfgang U. Dressler
- The rise of complexity in inflectional morphology
- Morphological complexity without abstractness: Italo-Romance metaphony
- A "natural" approach to text complexity
- Towards naturalness scales of pragmatic complexity
- Part two. Regular articles
- A current trend or a historic remnant? The case of a Lovari verb-forming suffix
- Two communicative levels and twofold illocutionary force in televised political debates
- Common Semantic Denominators of the Internal Vowel Alternation System in English
- Indexical pronouns: Generic uses as clues to their structure
- A comparative study of morphosyntactic and discourse errors of intermediate and advanced EFL learners’ writing
- On the phonetic instability of the Polish rhotic /r/
- Lexical and functional decomposition in syntax: A view from phonology
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Part one. Complexity in Natural Linguistics. Guest edited by Wolfgang U. Dressler
- The rise of complexity in inflectional morphology
- Morphological complexity without abstractness: Italo-Romance metaphony
- A "natural" approach to text complexity
- Towards naturalness scales of pragmatic complexity
- Part two. Regular articles
- A current trend or a historic remnant? The case of a Lovari verb-forming suffix
- Two communicative levels and twofold illocutionary force in televised political debates
- Common Semantic Denominators of the Internal Vowel Alternation System in English
- Indexical pronouns: Generic uses as clues to their structure
- A comparative study of morphosyntactic and discourse errors of intermediate and advanced EFL learners’ writing
- On the phonetic instability of the Polish rhotic /r/
- Lexical and functional decomposition in syntax: A view from phonology
