A relevance-theoretic account of the way we use and understand the English temporal adverb again and its Norwegian counterpart igjen

The English temporal adverb again and the corresponding adverb igjen in Norwegian are words which do not encode a concept but rather an instruction to the audience to let the inferential phase of their comprehension process be guided by a specific contextual assumption. These adverbs have a procedural semantics in the sense of Relevance Theory, which distinguishes them semantically from an expression like once more or the prefix re-, both of which encode a conceptual meaning. English has a single lexical entry again whose encoded meaning is temporal yet not truth-conditional, and there is an exact correspondent igjen in the Norwegian lexicon, though Norwegian igjen in addition appears as two distinct non-temporal words encoding a concept and as a verbal particle forming a lexical entry together with a preceding verb. The full use range of the form igjen is found to be very similar to that of the Latin(ate) prefix re- as well as to the complex meaning of the verbal prefix ga- in the Niger-Congo language Ewe.

Published online: 06 June 2003
https://doi.org/10.1075/lic.3.1.04fre