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Part of
Figurative Thought and Language in Action
Edited by Mario Brdar and Rita Brdar-Szabó
[Figurative Thought and Language 16] 2022
► pp. 141–164

Physical and communicative force in Caused-Motion constructions

What they entail and what they implicate

| University of Hamburg
Folk models of “mere” talk and “real” action shape the inferential properties of Transitive Caused-Motion (TCM) constructions with a human Patient as direct object. Physical action verbs like force into/out of semantically entail motion of the Patient into/out of a location. In contrast, constructions with speech act verbs like order into/out of pragmatically implicate motion of the Patient. Notwithstanding, cases like boo out of show that strong communicative pressure can result in entailed motion of the Patient. Finally, the contrast between constructional pairs like order somebody out of the car (stronger implicature of motion) vs. order somebody to get out of the car (weaker implicature of motion) supports the hypothesis of an iconic relationship between syntactic closeness and implicational strength.
Keywords: folk models of talk and action, physical action verbs, speech act verbs, entailment, implicature, iconicity
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Folk models of action, force and types of inference
    • 2.1The folk model of talk and action
    • 2.2Force dynamics
  • 3.Physical actions vs. communicative actions in three constructions
  • 4.Physical actions vs. communicative actions in TCM constructions
    • 4.1Introduction
    • 4.2Hypotheses
    • 4.3actuality entailments vs. defeasible actuality implicatures
    • 4.4Contextually confirmed and reinforced actuality implicatures
    • 4.5Borderline cases: When implicature turns into quasi-entailment of actuality
    • 4.6Metaphor: physical action as communicative action
    • 4.7Manner and iconicity: How they influence the strength of implications
  • 5.Conclusion and outlook
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 28 July 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ftl.16.06pan
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