Aspects of the Pragmatics of Plural Morphology: On Higher-Order Implicatures
Aspects of the Pragmatics of Plural Morphology: On Higher-Order Implicatures
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复数形态的语用学方面：论高阶含义
DOI：
10.1057/9780230210752_9
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发表时间：
2007
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Benjamin Spector
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Benjamin Spector
本章认为，裸复数（和其他一些复数不定词）的语义行为为高阶含义的存在提供了证据，即基于给定句子与其替代句子的语用意义（而不仅仅是其字面意义）的比较的语用推断。简而言之，我认为像马这样的简单复数名词表示个体的集合，无论是原子的还是复合的，其原子部分就是单个的马，而且人们从句子中得到的至少两次解读，比如约翰在花园里见过马，是一种隐含含义，来源于这个句子与约翰在花园里见过马的比较。就其字面意义而言，后一句是真的，当且仅当约翰在花园里至少看到了一匹马，但在实际意义上被强化为约翰在花园里只看到了一匹马（标量含意）。因此，约翰在花园里见过马暗示了约翰在花园里只见过一匹马的否定，所以它最终意味着约翰见过几匹马。基于迭代穷竭运算符的可能性，我给出了导致高阶含义的过程的显式形式化。该建议解释了复数不定词在各种语言语境中的解读（单调下降语境、非单调语境和普遍量化语境）。
This chapter argues that the semantic behavior of bare plurals (and some other plural indefinites) provides evidence for the existence of higher-order implicatures, i.e. pragmatic inferences based on the comparison of a given sentence with the pragmatic meanings of its alternatives (and not only with their literal meanings). In a nutshell, I claim that a bare plural noun like horses denotes the set of individuals, be they atomic or complex, whose atomic parts are individual horses, and that the at-least-two-reading that one gets in sentences such as John has seen horses in the garden is an implicature that derives from the comparison of this sentence with John has seen a horse in the garden. In terms of its literal meaning, the latter sentence is true if and only if John has seen at least one horse in the garden, but gets pragmatically strengthened into John has seen exactly one horse in the garden (scalar implicature). As a result, John has seen horses in the garden will implicate the negation of John has seen exactly one horse in the garden, so that it will end up meaning John has seen several horses. I give an explicit formalization of the processes that lead to higher-order implicatures, based on the possibility of iterating an exhaustivity operator. The proposal accounts for the readings of plural indefinites in various linguistic contexts (monotone-decreasing contexts, non-monotonic contexts, and universally quantified contexts).