Chapter 4
Implicitness in the lexis
Lexical narrowing and neo-Gricean pragmatics
In this chapter, I present a neo-Gricean pragmatic analysis of lexical narrowing. By lexical narrowing is meant the phenomenon of implicitness whereby the use of a lexical item conveys a meaning that is more specific than the lexical expression’s lexically encoded meaning. Lexical narrowing can be grouped into two types: (i) Q-based and (ii) R/I-based. In the first type, the use of a semantically weaker lexical item in a set of contrastive semantic alternates Q-implicates the negation of the meaning associated with that of the semantically stronger lexical item in the same set. In the second, the use of a semantically general lexical expression I-implicates a semantically more specific sense. Finally, I argue that the pragmatic enrichment involving lexical narrowing is nothing but a neo-Gricean, ‘pre-semantic’ conversational implicature.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Semantic underspecification
- 2.1Linguistic underdeterminacy thesis
- 2.2Semantic or lexical underspecification
- 3.Classical and neo-Gricean pragmatics
- 3.1Classical Gricean pragmatics
- 3.2Horn’s bipartite neo-Gricean model
- 3.3Levinson’s trinitarian neo-Gricean pragmatic model
- 4.Two types of lexical narrowing
- 4.1.Q-based lexical narrowing
- 4.2.R/I-based lexical narrowing
- 5.Pragmatic enrichment involving lexical narrowing: Explicature, the pragmatically enriched said, conversational impliciture or conversational implicature?
- Author Query
-
Acknowledgements
-
Notes
-
References
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