The role of scalarity in the meaning and function of language: a formal semantic/pragmatic approach

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This project investigated the role of scalarity in natural language in terms of the semantics/pragmatics interface. Particularly, I focused on the phenomena of intensifiers, comparison, modal demonstratives, and diminutives, and considered the relationship between semantic scalar meaning and pragmatic scalar meaning. Through analyzing the meanings and use of these phenomena, I clarified that (i) scalarity not only plays an important role in the semantic dimension but also in the discourse-pragmatic dimension (e.g., politeness, modes of speaking, precedence of utterances, and expressives), and that (ii) there is a parallelism between the semantic dimension and the pragmatic dimension in terms of scalarity.