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The paper outlines a particular group of English verbs - those of intermediate function. Modal idioms, semi-auxiliaries and catenative verb constructions exhibit the gradience that refers to the properties of modal and auxiliary verbs.
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Paper deals with onomastic recorded in village Ćuska near Peć. The village is located on the 3rd kilometer from Peć. Materials for the study were collected during conversation with residents who were displaced after the war in 1999. Toponyms and antroponyms are recorded. This paper is supplement to onomastic research conducted by PhD Mileta Bukumirić and PhD Danilo Stijović. Semantic and formative analysis of the recorded onomastic units have been conducted. Dictionary of registered onyms is added in the end.
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Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht die semantischen Aspekte der Präposition wegen in deutscher Sprache unter Berücksichtigung ihrer Entsprechungen im Bosnischen/Kroatischen/Serbischen. Obwohl als Gemeinplatz gilt, dass wegen zu dem Teil der Präpositionen gehört, die stets gleichbleibende Bedeutung aufweisen, nämlich kausale, ist das Ziel dieser Untersuchung das Gegenteil zu beweisen. In der einschlägigen Literatur können ca. neun verschiedene Bedeutungen von wegen identifiziert werden. Davon konnten sechs Bedeutungsnuancen der Präposition wegen in unserem Korpus gefunden werden. Damit wird gezeigt, dass wegen eher in die Gruppe der polysemen Präpositionen eingeordnet werden kann.
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Sözün mənasını yalnız onun əşyavi-məntiqi münasibətlərinə görə təyin etmək cəhdi məna və anlayışın eyniliyini etiraf etmək deməkdir, bu isə zənnimizcə düzgün deyil, çünki anlayış - məntiq kateqoriyasıdır. Anlayış materiyanın yüksək məhsulu olan beynin məhsuludur, onun funksiyasıdır. Sözün mənası isə dilçilik kateqoriyasıdır. Y.M.Qalkina-Fedoruk düzgün olaraq qeyd edir ki, «məna dedikdə, sözə şamil edilən fikri (düşüncəni) başa düşmək lazım gəlir» [8, 28]. Həmin sözə verilən məna yalnız sırf anlayış əhəmiyyətinə deyil, həm də əlavə mənaya malikdir. Bu əlavə mənalar isə sözün emosional-ekspressiv elementlərindən ibarət olur. İnsanın psixi fəaliyyəti üç amilə əsaslanır: əqli, emosional və iradi. İnsanın emosional və iradi fəaliyyətini onun əqli fəaliyyətindən ayırmaq mümkün olmadığı kimi onun fitri hissləri ilə gerçəkliyi rasional dərk etməsini də inkar etmək olmaz İnsanın hiss və emosiyalarından kənarda heç bir informasiya, heç bir əqli fəaliyyət ola bilməz. Y.M.Qalkina-Fedoruk tamamilə haqlıdır ki, «əqli fəaliyyət emosional və iradi fəaliyyətlə bağlıdır və hər cür emosiya və iradənin mənası var»
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The paper dwells on the semantic category ‘size-dimension’. It focuses on the specifics of the absolute and relatively linguistic size. The linguistic structures interpret the size of the objects from four different kinds of norms: the norm of kind (the average standard in the representation of the size feature), the situational norm, the norm of proportionality and the norm of expectation. Each one of these kinds has its own linguistic representation. The object of description and analysis in the present paper are the exhibit structures reflecting the size with respect to the situational norm in Russian and Bulgarian languages.
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This study explores statistically child language-acquisition using data extracted from large collections for acquisition in two languages – English and French. Comparison of the two collections reveals that the advancement in acquiring vocabulary displays very big differences when the children’s speech is classified by the parts of speech deployed, as these are formally defined in the two languages, despite there being no reasons to suppose that the two language groups of children should show significant differences in cognitive development. The hypothesis put forward is that there exist general classes of meaning-representation and the challenge is to obtain evidence corroborating this. A specific set of classes is proposed, derived according to their different contributing roles in the mental representation of the world, considered from the perspective of an “Actor in the environment” cognitive model. The identified parts of speech from the two languages are sorted into the proposed classes. It is shown statistically that when children’s speech is discriminated to these classes, the acquisition processes in the two languages are very alike. Examining the data, the use of these classes is evident from the onset of language production. Some particularities related to factors influencing the use of communicators, interjections and onomatopoeias in children’s speech are discussed in addition to the study’s overall findings.
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The reflections presented in this paper focus on comparing the expression representing the notion mentioned in the title and its cognates, that is linguistic units representing the notion of surprise (‘zdziwienie’), startlement (‘zaskoczenie’) and amazement (‘zdumienie’). Juxtaposing the predicates which are similar in meaning serves the purpose of finding significant features differentiating the words in question and determining their distinctiveness. The descriptions of the analysed predicates include such properties as: the form of the units representing the discussed notions; an ability to determine the selectional restrictions imposed on the realisation of the non-subject argument denoting the phenomenon which causes the analysed states, as well as the subject argument referring to the subject experiencing them; the issue of factivity; the issue of possible evaluation implied by the described expressions; and curiosities in the functioning of certain grammatical forms of the analysed expressions. In the discussions of a strictly semantic nature, the issues related to knowledge vs lack of knowledge on the part of the experiencing subject seem to be of key importance. A summary of the search signalled in the title of the paper consists in a preliminary, intended to be the first, proposition of explication of the expression kogoś zdziwiło (to), że p (someone was surprised that p).
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We follow Pollard (2007) in assuming that the mainstream Kripke/Montagueinspired possible-worlds semantics is “a framework known to have dubious foundations” (primarily because of the granularity problem), and “worlds are constructed from propositions […], and not the other way around”. We intend to work out this approach in a DRT-based framework, called ReALIS, in order to account for phenomena concerning referent accessibility, at the same time. We claim that our system offers a general solution to problems of intensional identity, and it is devoid of DRT’s “extra level” problem—by embedding discourse representations in the world model, not directly but as parts of the representations of interpreters’ minds, i.e., their (permanently changing) information states/“internal worlds”. Hence, there is simply no intensionality in ReALIS as interpreters’ “worldlets” (in description of their brains within the entire model of the universe) carry all kinds of information (BDI, guesswork, dream) typically “entrusted to” possible worlds.
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This article reviews some of the theoretical notions and empirical phenomena which figure in current formal-semantic theories of focus. It also develops the connection between “alternative semantics” and “givenness” accounts of focus interpretation.
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This paper reviews notions related to focus and presupposition and addresses the hypothesis that focus triggers an existential presupposition. Presupposition projection behavior in certain examples appears to favor a presuppositional analysis of focus. It is argued that these examples are open to a different analysis using givenness theory. Overall, the analysis favors a weak semantics for focus not including an existential presupposition.
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New evidence is provided for a grammatical principle that singles out contrastive focus (Rooth 1996; Truckenbrodt 1995) and distinguishes it from discourse-new “informational” focus. Since the prosody of discourse-given constituents may also be distinguished from discourse-new, a three-way distinction in representation is motivated. It is assumed that an F-feature marks just contrastive focus (Jackendoff 1972, Rooth 1992), and that a G-feature marks discourse-given constituents (Féry-Samek-Lodovici 2006), while discourse-new is unmarked. A crucial argument for G-marking comes from second occurrence focus (SOF) prosody, which arguably derives from a syntactic representation where SOF is both F-marked and G-marked. This analysis relies on a new G-Marking Condition specifying that a contrastive focus may be G-marked only if the focus semantic value of its scope is discourse-given, i.e., only if the contrast itself is given.
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The paper puts forward a discourse-semantic account of the notoriously evasive phenomena of contrastivity and emphasis. Based on new evidence from Chadic, it is argued that occurrences of focus that are treated in terms of ‘contrastive focus’, ‘kontrast’ (Vallduví-Vilkuna 1998) or ‘identificational focus’ (É. Kiss 1998) in the literature should not be analyzed in familiar semantic terms as involving the introduction and subsequent exclusion of alternatives. Rather, an adequate analysis must take into account discourse-semantic notions like ‘hearer expectation’ or ‘discourse expectability’ of the focused content in a given discourse situation. The less expected the focus content is judged to be for the hearer, relative to the Common Ground, the more likely a speaker is to mark the focus constituent by means of special grammatical devices, thus giving rise to emphasis.
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Three dimensions can be distinguished in a cross-linguistic account of information structure. First, there is the definition of the focus constituent, the part of the linguistic expression which is subject to some focus meaning. Second and third, there are the focus meanings and the array of structural devices that encode them. In a given language, the expression of focus is facilitated as well as constrained by the grammar within which the focus devices operate. The prevalence of focus ambiguity, the structural inability to make focus distinctions, will thus vary across languages, and within a language, across focus meanings.
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In the paper I discuss semantic change as a cognitive adaptation process which flexibly adjusts the culturally shared conceptual category system of a language to changing conditions in the environment. I back up this view with the claim that the evolutionary function of cognition is to provide the organism with functional "knowledge" of its environment for the sake of adaptive orientation in a flexible way relative to the stability of environmental conditions. Hence, the cognitive function of language is to promote social cognition in order to facilitate the sharing of knowledge that proves functional and adaptive in the given physical, social and cultural environment of a group of individuals. In this light the cognitive function of the mental machinery of conceptualization and imagery-as the basis of meaning as understanding---is the adaptive construal of phenomena. Semantic leaps in the form of metaphor, metonymy and other kinds of meaning extension create new adaptive perspectives on the environment. When the circumstances triggering such novel usage persist, these perspectives will become conventionalized in the process of semantic change, leading to new established forms of functional and adaptive imagery.
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Although hyperbole is a ubiquitous means of discourse, its role in interpersonal rhetoric has been examined to a much lesser extent than that of metaphor or irony. This paper investigates what discourse goals can be fulfilled by hyperbole, using conversations from some classic Hungarian films as the data. The reason why film conversations were selected is that the knowledge of the story and the transparency of the characters' intentions make the understanding of communicative motives easy. Besides, the situations in feature films are very similar to spontaneous everyday interactions. Analyses demonstrate that hyperbolic utterances convey the speakers' attitudes, either real or only presented, towards the topic of conversation. According to the social psychological laws of public behaviour, the expression of emotional relation or attitude is mostly subordinated to the speaker's attempt to construct an intended impression on conversational partners. Thus, the use of hyperbole has two main goals: to express emotions and to reach a desired self-presentation.
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This paper proposes an explanation of the apparent scope inversion attested in sentences pronounced with a rise fall intonation contour. It argues that a left-peripheral quantifier pronounced with a (fall-)rise is in topic position (Spec, TopP). A topic phrase must refer to an individual already present in the domain of discourse-that which will be predicated about in the sentence. Non-individual-denoting expressions, among them quantifiers, can also be made suitable for the topic role if they are assumed to denote a property which the rest of the sentence predicates some higher-order property about. A quantifier functioning as a contrastive topic denotes a property of plural individuals, and its apparent narrow scope arises from the fact that it is considered to be a predicate over a variable inherent in the lexical representation of the verb.
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Meaning Holism and Contextualism are standardly acknowledged to be similar relativistic theories that often lead to similar troubles, in particular to issues concerning instability. On the other hand, the main rival of Contextualism, which is Minimalism, is taken to be resistant to these problems. In effect, it seems inevitable to see Meaning Holism and Minimalism as natural enemies. In my paper, I attempt to reject such a view. My argumentation consists of three main parts. First, I argue that Minimalism does not differ that much from Meaning Holism with respect to the instability issues as it also faces some of them (although in a slightly different way from the case of Holism of Contextualism). Second, I put forward several arguments to show that in fact Minimalism is not incompatible with the two versions of MeaningHolism I distinguish, namely Global Holism and Local Holism. I argue that a meaning holist has to accept some not uncontroversial principles to become an anti-minimalist – and vice versa. Finally, I demonstrate that Minimalism and Meaning Holism can be reconciled. Such a possibility occurs when something I called ‘purely semantic processes’ is allowed. The role of these processes is, roughly speaking, to protect literal meanings from being affected by strong pragmatic factors.
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В последнее время исследование эмоций представляет большой интерес со сто-роны учёных. Одним из популярных направлений в современной лингвистике является изучение лексем, которые называют внутреннее эмоциональное состоя-ние. Хотя основные эмоции, такие как страх, гнев, радость, в значительной степени универсальны, свойственны для человеческой сущности, в разных языках они мо-гут быть выражены по-разному. В данной статье рассматривается семантика лек-семы smutek в современном польском романе Януша Леона Вишневского „Одино-чество в Сети”, а также в его переводе на латышский язык. На основе анализа вы-являются семантические сходства и различия польской лексемы smutek и латыш-ских skumjas и bēdas.
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W artykule omówiono wybrane problemy dotyczące opisu semantycznego czasowników mówienia w języku angielskim i polskim. Celem artykułu jest ukazanie możliwości ewentualnego zastosowania współczesnych teorii semantycznych do opisu znaczenia leksykalnego ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem analizy konceptualnej. Omówione zagadnienia koncentrują się na metodach formalizacji znaczenia leksemów oraz ich wzajemnych relacji. Końcowa część artykułu zawiera przykładowe robocze hasła słownikowe, stworzone do dalszego zastosowania w komputerowym tezaurusie polsko-angielskim (BIT), przygotowywanym w Instytucie Anglistyki Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego. Przedstawiona analiza nie jest uważana za ostateczną.
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Celem niniejszego artykułu jest przegląd struktur znaczenia słowa. Autor ukazuje, że znaczenie słowa składa się z różnych elementów, które wprawdzie pozostają w ścisłym związku, mogą być jednakże rozpatrywane oddzielnie dla celów badawczych bądź dydaktycznych.
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