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Originally presented as the author's thesis-University College, London, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references and index.

Originally presented as the author's Thesis--University College, London, 1995. / Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references and index.

This thesis presents a novel pragmatic account of the meaning and use of numerically-quantified expressions. It can readily be seen that quantities can typically be described by many semantically truthful expressions - for instance, if 'more than 12' is true of a quantity, so is 'more than 11', 'more than 10', and so on. It is also intuitively clear that some of these expressions are more suitable than others in a given situation, a preference which is not captured by the semantics but appears to rely upon on wider-ranging considerations of communicative effectiveness. Motivated by these observations, I lay out a set of criteria that are demonstrably relevant to the speaker's choice of utterance in such cases. Observing further that it is typically impossible to satisfy all these criteria with a single utterance, I suggest that the speaker's choice of utterance can be construed as a problem of multiple constraint satisfaction. Using the formalism of Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993), I proceed to specify a model of speaker behaviour for this domain of usage. The model I propose can be used to draw predictions both about the speaker's choice of utterance and the hearer's interpretation of utterances. I discuss the relation between these two aspects of the model, showing how constraints on the speaker's choice of utterance are predicted to make pragmatic enrichments available to the hearer. I then consider applications of this idea to specific issues that have been discussed in the literature. Firstly, with respect to superlative quantifiers, I show how this model provides an alternative account to that of Geurts and Nouwen (2007), building upon that offered by Cummins and Katsos (2010), and I present empirical evidence in its favour. Secondly, I show how this model yields the novel prediction that comparative quantifiers give rise to implicatures that are conditioned both by granularity and by prior mention of the numeral, and demonstrate these implicatures empirically. Finally I discuss the predictions that the model makes about the frequency of quantifiers in corpora, and investigate their validity. I conclude that the model presented here proves its worth as a source of hypotheses about speaker and hearer behaviour in the numerical domain. In particular, it serves as a way to integrate insights from distinct domains of enquiry including psycholinguistics, theoretical semantics and numerical cognition. I discuss the claim of this model to psychological plausibility, its relation to existing approaches, and its potential utility when applied to broader domains of language use.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 1985. / Includes index. Includes bibliographical references (p. 295-301).

The historical development of Morris’ tripartite distinction between syntax, semantics and pragmatics does not follow a smooth path. Examining definitions of the terms ‘semantic’ and ‘pragmatic’ and the phenomena they have been used to describe, provides insight into alternative approaches to the semantics/pragmatics distinction. Paul Grice’s work receives particular attention and taxonomy of philosophical positions, roughly divisible into content minimalist and maximalist groups, is set up. Grice’s often neglected theory of conventional implicature is defended from objections, various tests for the presence of conventional implicature are assessed and the linguistic properties of conventional implicature defined. Once rehabilitated, the theoretical utility of conventional implicature is demonstrated via a case study of the semantic import of the gender and number of pronouns in English. The better-known theory of conversational implicature is also examined and refined. New linguistic tests for such implicatures are devised and the refined theory is applied to scalar terms. A pragmatic approach to scalar implicatures is proposed and shown to fare better than alternatives presented by Uli Sauerland, Stephen Levinson and Gennaro Chierchia. With the details of the theory conversational implicature established, the use made of Grice’s tool in the work of several philosophers is critically evaluated. Kent Bach’s minimalist approach to quantifier domain restriction is examined and criticised. Also, the linguistic evidence for semantic minimalism provided by Herman Cappelen and Ernie Lepore is found wanting. Finally, a content maximalist approach to quantifier domain restriction is proposed. The approach differs from other context maximalist theories, such as Jason Stanley’s, in relying on semantically unarticulated constituents. Stanley’s arguments against such theories are examined. Further applications of the approach are briefly surveyed.

This thesis offers an analysis of the Arabic Commentaries on the Hippocratic Aphorisms (9th-15th centuries AD) on three levels, (i) translation, (ii) individual styles and (iii) genre. It particularly examines meta-discursive features such as cohesion, subjectivity, hedges, the addressing of readership, and the formulation of truth statements. The analysis of these features reveals rhetorical conventions in the corpus that indicate a discursive unity of the genre of the medieval medical commentary. Yet, this study also shows considerable stylistic variation between the individual commentators which, besides its intrinsic value, is crucial for the identification of these authors’ texts. Moreover, this research examines how the rhetorical features of the later commentaries have developed after the fashion of Ḥunayn Ibn Isḥāq’s 9th-century translation of Galen’s 2nd-century Greek commentary. This study highlights significant differences between Ḥunayn’s rhetorical strategies and those in the later Arabic commentaries. Thus, this work demonstrates discontinuities between Greek and Arabic medical discourses, despite the huge influence of Ḥunayn’s translation. This thesis uses an innovative quantitative methodology combining both close reading and distant reading techniques to study Ḥunayn’s translation technique, and compare Ḥunayn’s style with that of the later commentators. Furthermore, this study advances the understanding of the ways of writing in scientific medieval Arabic. Finally, the separate studies in this thesis contribute knowledge regarding grammatical phenomena such as modals, conjunctions, and conditionals in Classical Arabic.

Vom 18. bis 20. September 2014 kam die Gruppe der JungslavistInnen zu ihrem 23. Treffen in Dresden zusammen. Die Tagung, die am Institut für Slavistik an der TU Dresden stattfand, beinhaltete ein breites Spektrum an Beiträgen aus der synchronen und diachronen Linguistik, Semantik und Pragmatik, Kontaktlinguistik und Kleinsprachenforschung. Präsentiert wurden außerdem Arbeitsergebnisse aus den Bereichen der Schriftlinguistik, genderorientierten Sprachwissenschaft sowie kulturwissenschaftlichen Linguistik. Die ausgewählten Aspekte und Problematiken der linguistischen Forschung wurden an zahlreichen Beispielen aus der Ost-, West- und Südslavia illustriert.

Die Arbeit untersucht im Rahmen einer kulturanalytischen Medienlinguistik mit vier Einzelfallstudien exemplarisch das wissenschaftliche Bloggen deutschsprechender Soziolog_innen. Dafür sind zwei Leitfragen zentral: (1) Welche Konturen der Praktik innerwissenschaftlichen Bloggens lassen sich aktuell nachzeichnen? (2) Wie konkretisiert sich eristisches Handeln als wesentliches Strukturkennzeichen der Praxis interner Wissenschaftskommunikation im Rahmen dieser Praktik? Den Ausgangspunkt bilden theoretische, begriffliche und methodologische Klärungen. Mit einem konsequent medienlinguistischen Ansatz wird deshalb zunächst ein erkenntnistheoretischer Standpunkt herausgearbeitet. Für die empirische Analyse wird dann der Forschungsstand zu historischen und rezenten Entwicklungen in der Wissenschaftskommunikation sowie zu ihrer Konzeptualisierung gesichtet und diskutiert: Dabei kommt es zu einer grundlegenden Problematisierung und prozessbezogenen Rekonzeptualisierung des medienlinguistischen Kommunikationsformenbegriffs ebenso wie des Eristikbegriffs der Wissenschaftssprachenforschung. Die Ergebnisse der vier Einzelfallstudien erhellen das Bloggen der deutschsprachigen Soziologie in seinen infrastrukturellen, sozialisatorischen, ethnotheoretischen und nicht zuletzt sprachlich-kommunikativen Dimensionen umfangreich. Sie zeichnen das Bild einer im Interim befindlichen Praktik. Diese entwickelt sich im Spannungsfeld zwischen den Normen interner Wissenschaftskommunikation und der medialen Spezifik von Weblogs. Dies führt unweigerlich zu Konflikten. Die unterschiedlichen Strategien ihrer Bewältigung führen im Effekt zu je unterschiedlichen Verortungen des Bloggens im kommunikativen Haushalt der Wissenschaft. / This study examines a relatively recent phenomenon, the practice of scholarly blogging, with regards to its eristic dimension which is conceived as an overarching characteristic of all scholarly communication. In order to do so, the practice of scholarly blogging itself has to be explored first: What are the essential characteristics of scholarly blogging? What linguistic means are used to serve the eristic purposes in said practice? To answer these key questions, the scholarly blogging of German-speaking sociologists is examined in four case studies. Theoretical, conceptual, and methodological considerations situate this study in culture-analytical media linguistics: An according epistemological perspective is developed. In preparation of the empirical analyses, the stand of research regarding historical and recent developments as well as the common conceptualizations of scholarly communication are then examined and discussed. The notion of communication form, central to German media linguistics, is consequently scrutinized and re-conceptualized as process rather than structure, as well as the notion of eristics, central to German linguistics of scholarly communications. The findings of the four case studies shed light upon blogging of German-speaking sociologists in the following dimensions: regarding media infrastructure, processes of socialization, conflicting ethnotheories, and, most importantly, linguistic means for eristic purposes. The case studies show a practice currently evolving, in tension between the norms of scholarly communication and the specific mediality of the communication form weblog. Which inevitably prompts conflicts: The different strategies of coping with these conflicts effectively place blogs on different positions in the communicative household of academia.