Lexical Pragmatics - Journal of Semantics

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138 Lexical Pragmaticsand a! that are semantically equivalent, i.e. C(a) = C(a') and let usassume furthermore that C(a) and C(a'), respectively, contain exactly twoelements mai r and m^dir of different complexity, say c(sem(a),mair) =c(sem(a / ),mdi r )
Reinhard Blutner 139implausible to assume that I have only one book or one finger. Only in theformer case can the more precise genitive form (/ slept on my book; I slept inmy car) block the corresponding interpretation. In treating the examples onthe right-hand side, we have to take into account also those interpretationswhere more than one book or one finger is involved; in this case there is noalternative expression that may block the ego-centred interpretations andthey may be selected by means of the I-principle.Summarizing, the present account of conversational implicature triesto give a real unification of the two competing 'forces' expressed by theQ-principle and the I-principle, respectively. This approach contrasts withmost recent theoretical accounts (e.g. Hirschberg 1991; Matsumoto 1995)that have focused on single classes of conversational implicatures only. Incontrast, the present account tries to address the integration of differentkinds of conversational implicatures.The main problems addressed in this paper are problems of LexicalPragmatics. Before I come to a detailed treatment of some typical examples,I want to discuss four theses that are designed to characterize LexicalPragmatics from a methodological point of view.3.2 Four theses of Lexical PragmaticsLexical Pragmatics is a research field that tries to give a systematic andexplanatory account of pragmatic phenomena that are intimately connectedwith the semantic underspecification of lexical items. The approachcombines a compositional semantics with a general mechanism of conversationalimplicature. Starting off from a underspecified semanticrepresentation, a mechanism of information enrichment (abduction) isinvoked to yield the appropriate specification with regard to thecommon ground.In section 2 the range of Lexical Pragmatics has been characterized byseveral examples, and some general, typical problems have been discussed.The present subsection tries to sharpen the rather impressionistic picturethat has evolved and attempts to illuminate it from a methodologicalperspective.Downloaded from http://jos.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on September 12, 2014Thesis i: Lexical Pragmatics is non-compositionalIn section 2 I argued against the principle of pragmatic compositionality. Thisprinciple says that it is possible to decompose the lexical items of ancompound expression into conceptual components which combinedtogether determine the conceptual interpretation of the whole expression.
Page 7 and 8: Reinhard Blutner 121(c) a fast book
Page 9: Reinhard Blutner 123not necessarily
Page 12: 126 Lexical Pragmaticsmeaning that
Page 15 and 16: Reinhard Blutner 129grasp intuitive
Page 18 and 19: 132 Lexical Pragmaticspr(m|sem(a))
Page 20 and 21: 134 Lexical Pragmaticsthe propositi
Page 22 and 23: 136 Lexical Pragmaticsprocesses and
Page 26 and 27: 140 Lexical PragmaticsI have tried
Page 28 and 29: 142 Lexical Pragmaticsagainst the c
Page 30 and 31: 144 Lexical Pragmatics4.1 Cost-base
Page 32 and 33: 146 Lexical PragmaticsSince we have
Page 34 and 35: 148 Lexical Pragmaticsproposition B
Page 36 and 37: 150 Lexical Pragmatics(3$) (a) The
Page 38 and 39: 152 Lexical PragmaticsThis utteranc
Page 40 and 41: 154 Lexical Pragmatics(45) (a) 3e[S
Page 42 and 43: 156 Lexical Pragmaticson the way ho
Page 44 and 45: 158 Lexical PragmaticsNOTES1 I have
Page 46 and 47: i6o Lexical PragmaticsREFERENCESAls
Page 48: 162 Lexical PragmaticsPustejovsky,

Lexical Pragmatics - Journal of Semantics

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