@article{MazzarellaGotzner2021, author = {Mazzarella, Diana and Gotzner, Nicole}, title = {The polarity asymmetry of negative strengthening}, series = {Glossa : a journal of general linguistics}, volume = {6}, journal = {Glossa : a journal of general linguistics}, number = {1}, publisher = {Open Library of Humanities}, address = {London}, issn = {2397-1835}, doi = {10.5334/gjgl.1342}, pages = {17}, year = {2021}, abstract = {The interpretation of negated antonyms is characterised by a polarity asymmetry: the negation of a positive polarity antonym (X is not interesting) is more likely to be strengthened to convey its opposite ('X is uninteresting') than the negation of a negative polarity antonym (X is not uninteresting to convey that 'X is interesting') is. A classical explanation of this asymmetry relies on face-management. Since the predication of a negative polarity antonym (X is uninteresting) is potentially face-threatening in most contexts, the negation of the corresponding positive polarity antonym (X is not interesting) is more likely to be interpreted as an indirect strategy to minimise face-threat while getting the message across. We present two experimental studies in which we test the predictions of this explanation. In contrast with it, our results show that adjectival polarity, but not face-threatening potential, appears to be responsible for the asymmetric interpretation of negated antonyms.}, language = {en} } @article{GerstenbergSkupienDekens2021, author = {Gerstenberg, Annette and Skupien-Dekens, Carine}, title = {A grammar of authority?}, series = {Journal of historical pragmatics}, volume = {22}, journal = {Journal of historical pragmatics}, number = {1}, publisher = {John Benjamins Publishing Co.}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {1566-5852}, doi = {10.1075/jhp.17006.ger}, pages = {1 -- 33}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Directive Speech Acts (dsas) are a major feature of historical pragmatics, specifically in research on historical (im)politeness. However, for Classical French, there is a lack of research on related phenomena. In our contribution, we present two recently constructed corpora covering the period of Classical French, sermo and apwcf. We present these corpora in terms of their genre characteristics on a communicative-functional and socio-pragmatic level. Based on the observation that, both in sermo and apwcf, dsas frequently occur together with terms of address, we analyse and manually code a sample based on this co-occurrence, and we compare the results with regard to special features in the individual corpora. The emerging patterns show a clear correspondence between socio-pragmatic factors and the linguistic means used to realise dsas. We propose that these results can be interpreted as signs of an underlying "grammar of authority".}, language = {en} }