Part of
Aspects of Meaning ConstructionEdited by Günter Radden, Klaus-Michael Köpcke, Thomas Berg and Peter Siemund
[Not in series 136] 2007
► pp. 225–245
Edited by Günter Radden, Klaus-Michael Köpcke, Thomas Berg and Peter Siemund
[Not in series 136] 2007
► pp. 225–245
The construction of vagueness
“Sort-of“ expressions in Romance languages
The aim of this contribution is to study the stages involved in the emergence of Romance (and some Germanic) approximators such as French espèce de or genre de based on taxonomic nouns such as French genre ‘genus’ and espèce ‘species’ and to demonstrate which implicatures trigger the emergence of the discursive function which consists in signalling loose talk. Particularly the first steps leading from taxonomic nouns to approximators are still unknown, while the emergence of further pragmatic functions such as mitigation, quotation or focus marking on the basis of approximative functions are relatively well-studied. Corpus data complemented by lexicographical data will help to reveal the implicatures arising and becoming entrenched in specific communicative tasks where expressions containing taxonomic nouns are used in order to achieve certain communicative goals related to loose meaning construction.
Keywords: approximation, approximator, hedge, kind of, pragmatic marker, pragmaticalisation, reanalysis, sort of, taxonomy
Cited by
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This list is based on CrossRef data as of 19 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.