Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics.pdf

Dictionary of language and linguistics 1256VvaguenessTerm that is complementary to ambiguity: whereas ambiguity refers to ambiguousnesswhich in the framework of grammatical models is represented th rough multipledescriptions, vagueness in the sense of ‘pragmatic indeterminacy’ is predictable, but notthe object of internal linguistic representation. An expression is pragmatically vague withrespect to certain semantic features which it leaves unspecified; e.g. person is notspecified with reference to the features [male] vs [female], [old] vs [young].Channell, J. 1994. Vague language. Oxford.ambiguityReferencesvalence [Lat. valere ‘to be worth’] (alsovalency)The term ‘valence’ comes from chemistry, where it is used to indicate the property ofatoms to bind or replace a certain number of hydrogen atoms in a molecule. Its use inlinguistics can be traced back to Tesnière (1959), although the concept of valence underdifferent names can be found earlier in linguistics. Valence is the ability of a lexeme (e.g.verb, adjective, noun) to predetermine its syntactic environment in that it places certainrequirements on the surrounding constituents in reference to their grammaticalcharacteristics. Thus the verbs greet and help require a direct object (which cannot beomitted in the case of greet), inhabit requires a locative complement.Closely related to valence is the concept of valence dependency (also valencebind ing). In a sentence, a constituent X is valencedependent on a lexeme Y if at least oneof the valence requirements of Y is present in X. In this case, X is a complement(Tesnière: actant) of the constituent containing Y.