TY - JOUR A1 - Alxatib, Sam A1 - Sauerland, Ulrich T1 - Vagueness JF - The Oxford Handbook of Experimental Semantics and Pragmatics N2 - Though vague phenomena have been studied extensively for many decades, it is only in recent years that researchers sought the support of quantitative data. This chapter highlights and discusses the insights that experimental methods brought to the study of vagueness. One area focused on are ‘borderline contradictions’, that is, sentences like ‘She is neither tall nor not tall’ that are contradictory when analysed in classical logic, but are actually acceptable as descriptions of borderline cases. The flourishing of theories and experimental studies that borderline contradictions have led to are examined closely. Beyond this illustrative case, an overview of recent studies that concern the classification of types of vagueness, the use of numbers, rounding, number modification, and the general pragmatic status of vagueness is provided. KW - vagueness KW - gradability KW - categories KW - borderline cases KW - contradiction KW - valency KW - imprecision KW - hysteresis KW - pragmatics KW - semantics Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198791768.013.24 PB - Oxford University Press CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ginev, Dimitri T1 - Die Idee einer Sprachhermeneutik BT - Rekonstruktion ihrer Problemgeschichte JF - Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie : Zweimonatsschrift der internationalen philosophischen Forschung N2 - Any conception in linguistics and linguistic philosophy that prioritizes the world-disclosing function over the world-representing function of language can be regarded as a kind of linguistic hermeneutics. The paper tries to specify this general thesis by picking up and analysing historical trends in the philosophy of language. It spells out the relationship between the situatedness of locutors in the medium of linguistic practices and the way in which they (through their speech acts) articulate this medium by actualizing possibilities for personal expressivity and interpersonal communication. It is argued that the starting point from the medium that always already transcends the particular speech acts offers an alternative to inferential semantics. From the perspective of linguistic hermeneutics, the world is disclosed and exposed to ongoing articulation in characteristic hermeneutic situations of language use. The concepts of linguistic medium and discursive articulation of the world are treated in terms of hermeneutic trans- subjectivity as enabling all forms of communicative intersubjectivity. If one ignores the fore-structuring role of the former, one would hypostatise the latter. With regard to this claim, the theory of formal pragmatics is critically discussed. T2 - The idea of a linguistic hermeneutics reconstruction of its problem history KW - hermeneutics KW - linguistic hermeneutics KW - intersubjectivity KW - pragmatics KW - language Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1515/dzph-2021-0049 SN - 0012-1045 SN - 2192-1482 VL - 69 IS - 4 SP - 576 EP - 602 PB - De Gruyter CY - Berlin ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schreiber, Alexander A1 - Onea Gáspár, Edgar T1 - Are narrow focus exhaustivity inferences Bayesian inferences? JF - Frontiers in psychology / Frontiers Research Foundation N2 - In successful communication, the literal meaning of linguistic utterances is often enriched by pragmatic inferences. Part of the pragmatic reasoning underlying such inferences has been successfully modeled as Bayesian goal recognition in the Rational Speech Act (RSA) framework. In this paper, we try to model the interpretation of question-answer sequences with narrow focus in the answer in the RSA framework, thereby exploring the effects of domain size and prior probabilities on interpretation. Should narrow focus exhaustivity inferences be actually based on Bayesian inference involving prior probabilities of states, RSA models should predict a dependency of exhaustivity on these factors. We present experimental data that suggest that interlocutors do not act according to the predictions of the RSA model and that exhaustivity is in fact approximately constant across different domain sizes and priors. The results constitute a conceptual challenge for Bayesian accounts of the underlying pragmatic inferences. KW - pragmatics KW - Bayesian models KW - rational speech act models KW - implicatures KW - focus KW - exhaustivity Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.677223 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 12 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Warditz, Vladislava Maria T1 - Brückners Höflichkeitskonzept (1916): Linguistik oder Ideologie? Linguistische Untersuchung des sprachpolitischen Manifests eines Universalgelehrten JF - Zeitschrift für Slawistik N2 - The paper presents the Polish study Ty-wy-pan. Kartka z dziejów próżności ludzkiej (‘You (singular)–you (plural)–Lord. An overview on the history of the people’s vanity’, 1916) by Alexander Brückner from a linguistic-pragmatical as well as ideological point of view. In his pioneer study on politeness, the German-Polish slavist Brückner (1856–1939) critically reflects on the current system of Polish addresses and titles, especially in relating to the soon-to-be refoundation of the Second Polish Republic (1918). The paper analyzes how his linguistic description and his ideas for reformation of the Polish addressative system are pragmatically justified and how they are ideologically motivated. Furthermore, the paper reconstructs the status of Brückner’s concept of politeness in the context of current studies on Polish pragmatics. KW - Alexander Bruckner KW - Polish addressative system KW - politeness KW - pragmatics KW - language ideology KW - language change Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1515/slaw-2017-0014 SN - 0044-3506 VL - 62 SP - 297 EP - 315 PB - De Gruyter CY - Berlin ER -