Sank's Glossary of Linguistics
Exh-Expn |
EXHAUSTIFICATION
- (Semantics) A process where one proposition is asserted, and stronger alternatives to that proposition are negated. It's something that's often used in work on questions, scalar implicatures, and focus particles, to name a few areas. | Curt Anderson, 2020
- (Semantics) The "grammatical approach to implicatures" provides a way to square Cooperative Speaker with the facts (cf. Krifka 1995, Fox 2007, Chierchia et al. 2012). The idea is that we have to tinker with the grammar after all. The core of the proposal is the postulation of a covert lexical item, EXHC, which composes with a sentence φ, its prejacent, to affirm φ and negate a selection of φ's alternatives. | Tue Trinh, 2019
- (Semantics) The term exhaustiveness was first used by Baker (1968) to refer to the requirement that a constituent question be given a complete answer. For example, (1b) would not be fully adequate as an answer to (1a) if Mary had eaten a calzone too. If such were the case, (1c) would be a correct answer.
- a. What did Mary eat?
b. Mary ate a pizza.
c. Mary ate a pizza and a calzone.
As an answer, we can think of (1b) as being ruled out by (1c), because (1c) is more exhaustive, in the sense that it contains additional true information. A number of researchers (e.g., Kuno 1972, Atlas and Levinson 1981, Horn
1981, Szabolcsi 1981, É. Kiss 1998) have noted that exhaustification effects are not limited to questions. More precisely, there are a range of syntactic and phonological devices for signalling exhaustive listing interpretations. For example, the
cleft (2a) and the pseudocleft (2b) both require such an interpretation:
- a. It was a pizza that Mary ate.
b. What Mary ate was a pizza.
Both sentences in (2) say:
- that Mary ate a pizza, and
- that Mary ate nothing else.
That (ii) is part of the assertion of these sentences and not a conversational implicature is confirmed by tests devised by Szabolcsi (1981) and Donka Farkas. | Alastair Butler, 2001
EXHAUSTIFICATION OPERATOR
(Semantics) According to grammatical accounts of Scalar Implicatures (SIs), SIs are triggered by an exhaustification operator, exh, which asserts both its prejacent and the negation of each of its excludable alternatives (Gennaro Chierchia et al. 2011, a.o.).
For a structure φ of propositional type and context c:
- ⟦exh(φ)⟧ = ⟦φ⟧ ∧ ⋀ ¬ ⟦ψ⟧ : ψ ∈ Excl(φ) ∧ ⟦ψ⟧ ∈ R.
- Excl(φ) is a subset of the set of formal alternatives of φ, such that, for each ψ ∈ Excl(φ), ⟦ψ⟧ isn't logically entailed by ⟦φ⟧ (or equivalently, such that ⟦φ⟧ is logically consistent with ¬⟦ψ⟧).
- R = a contextually assigned 'relevance' predicate which minimally satisfies the following two conditions:
- the prejacent, φ, is relevant, i.e. ⟦φ⟧ ∈ R, and
- any proposition that is contextually equivalent to the prejacent is also in R
(i.e., if ⟦φ⟧ ∩ c ≡ ⟦ψ⟧ ∩ c, then ⟦ψ⟧ ∈ R).
| Itai Bassi, Guillermo Del Pinal, and Uli Sauerland, 2021
EXHAUSTIVE IDENTIFICATION MARKING
(Semantics) In Wolof (West Atlantic Niger-Congo, Senegal), exhaustive identification of a DP involves moving it to Spec,CP, as in (1). The complementizer that hosts the moved nominal in its
specifier is the A′-movement complementizer (l)a.
- Exhaustive Identification
 
 
Musaa
Moussa
l-a
l-CWH
ñu
they
gis.
see
'It's Moussa who they saw.'
In exhaustive identification of a DP, the sentence particle (l)a occurs, and the exhaustively identified DP A′-moves to Spec,CP (Dunigan 1994, Martinović 2013, Torrence 2005, 2012, etc.). (L)a has all the properties of an A′-movement complementizer:
- It is obligatory in long-distance extraction.
- It occurs in every C position in successive-cyclic movement (as the Irish aL; McCloskey 2000, 2001).
- It exhibits a subject/non-subject asymmetry, akin to the that-trace effect: it surfaces as a in case of subject extraction, and as la in case of non-subject
extraction (Martinović 2013).
- a. Exhaustive Identification of a non-subject
Goloi
monkey
l-a
l-CWH
xale
child
yi
DEF.PL
gis
see
ti
ti.
'It's a monkey that the children saw.'
b. Exhaustive Identification of a subject
Xale
child
yi-a (>yee)
DEF.PL-CWH
gis
see
golo.
monkey
'It's the children that saw the monkey.'
Exhaustive identification marking is usually related to a specialized syntactic position
(e.g. É Kiss 1995, Torrence 2013) and a syntactic feature on a head which triggers movement of the exhaustively identified constituent (such as a focus feature in Horvath 1986, 1995,
Brody 1990, 1995 or the Exhaustive Identification operator in Horvath 2007). What throws a wrench in such an analysis are cases of DP movement to the "exhaustifying" position which are not accompanied by exhaustive interpretation. | Peter Klecha and Martina Martinović, 2015
EXISTENTIAL CONSTRUCTION
(Syntax) Or, existential clause construction. The term has been used in two senses:
- For construction-functions (e.g. Clark 1978).
- For construction-strategies (e.g. McNally 2016, Creissels 2019).
In the first sense (which I prefer), an existential clause construction is "a clause construction in which an indefinite and discourse-new nominal phrase (the existent) is said to be in some location". In this sense, all of the clauses in (1)-(6) are existential clauses.
- English
There is a bird on the roof.
A bird is on the roof.
- Finnish
Kato-lla
roof-ADESS
on
is
lintu.
bird
'There is a bird on the roof.'
(Cf. Lintu on katolla. 'The bird is on the roof.')
- Logudorese Sardinian
In
in
custu
this
istradone
road
nch'
there
at
have.3SG
una
a
creža.
church
'In this road there is a church.'
(Lit. 'It there has a church in this road.') (Bentley et al. 2015)
- Tagalog
May
EXV
mga
PL
tao
person
sa
LOC
labas.
outside
'There are people outside.' (Sabbagh 2009)
- Wambaya (Mirndi, Australia)
Garnguji
many.NOM
julaji-rdarra
bird-GROUP.NOM
gayangga
high
darranggu-ni.
tree-LOC
'There are lots of bird up in the trees.' (Nordlinger 1998)
- German
- Temporary Location of Existent
Auf
on
dem
the
Tisch
table
stehen
stand
Blumen.
flowers
'There are flowers on the table.'
(Cf. ?* Auf dem Tisch gibt es Blumen.)
- Permanent Presence of Existent
In
in
Thailand
Thailand
gibt
gives
es
it
Tiger.
tigers
'There are tigers in Thailand.'
(Cf. ?* In Thailand sind Tiger.)
| Martin Haspelmath, 2021
EXISTENTIAL MARKER
(Grammar) A word, found in a distinct clause type, which marks a referent's existence.
The word hay in (1) is an existential marker:
- Spanish
Hay
EXIST
muchos
many
libros
books
en
in
la
the
biblioteca.
library
'There are many books in the library.' (Schachter 1985)
| SIL Glossary of Linguistic Terms, 2003
EXOCENTRIC COMPOUND
- (Morphology) A form or a word which does not have a head. This means that there is not one morphological segment that contributes the core meaning, and instead the meaning is comprised of all components together. | INLP Linguistic Glossary, 2021
- (Morphology) A compound that is not a
hyponym of one of its elements, and thus appears to lack a head or perhaps to have a head (or "center") external to the compound itself. English examples such as redhead 'a person with red hair', flat-foot 'policeman (slang)' and egghead 'intellectual' abound. | Laurie Bauer, 2008
See Also ENDOCENTRIC COMPOUND.
EXOCENTRIC CONSTRUCTION
(Syntax) A construction that does not contain any head element that is capable of being a syntactically adequate substitution for the whole construction.
Examples, in English:
- Prepositional phrase:
Neither the component preposition nor the noun phrase may substitute for the whole prepositional phrase.
- Clause:
No single element of the clause may substitute for the whole.
(Hartmann and Stork 1972, Pei and Gaynor 1954, Crystal 1985, Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik 1985) | Alphabetical Glossary of Lingustic Terms
EXPANDING FOCUS
- (Information Structure) When the focused referent extends the set of referents mentioned in a previous (incomplete) statement for which the proposition is true. If the previous statement had an exhaustive aspect of meaning, the extension corrects this exhaustivity, as in (1).
- A: Did you buy beans?
B: Yes, but I also bought [ rice ] FOC .
| Jenneke van der Wal and Stavros Skopeteas, 2019
- (Information Structure) Among the many kinds of focus that linguists have written about, I found a
particularly large number of examples of Expanding Focus (Dik 1987). Expanding focus is a mechanism for adding information to the previously presupposed information. This is easy to identify operationally because it involves creating lists, as in (1).
- A: Sally drinks coffee with breakfast.
B: Yes, but she also drinks [ orange juice ] FOC .
| Rebecca A. Hatch, 2014
EXPECTATION-BASED MINIMALIST GRAMMAR
(Syntax) Abbreviated e-MG. Any of certain simplified versions of the (Conflated) Minimalist Grammars, (C)MGs, formalized by Stabler (Stabler 2011, 2013, 1997) and Phase-based Minimalist Grammars (PMGs; Chesi 2005, 2007, Stabler 2011). The crucial simplification consists of driving structure building only using lexically encoded categorial top-down expectations. The commitment on a top-down procedure (in e-MGs and PMGs, as opposed to (C)MGs, Chomsky 1995, Stabler 2011) allows us to define a core derivation that is the same in both parsing and generation (Momma and Phillips 2018). | Cristiano Chesi, 2021
EXPLETIVE
- (Grammar) From Latin expletivus 'serving to fill out or take up space' (Beaven 2017, Halsi 1891). A word or phrase inserted into a sentence that is not needed to express the basic meaning of the sentence (Svenonius 2002). It is regarded as semantically null or a placeholder (Moro 1997). Expletives are not insignificant or meaningless in all senses; they may be used to give emphasis or tone, to contribute to the meter in verse, or to indicate tense (Lederer 1995, Lounsbury 1907).
Examples:
- The teacher was not, in fact, present.
- Indeed, the teacher was absent.
In conversation the expressions like and you know, when they are not meaningful, are expletives (Scott 1965). | Wikipedia, 2022
- (Syntax) A grammatical element having no semantic content and occurring in theta-bar positions. Examples:
- There is a man in the room.
- It seems that John is ill.
(Chomsky 1981, 1986, 1993) | Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics, 2001
EXPLICATURE
(Pragmatics) There are two types of communicated assumptions on the relevance-theoretic account: explicatures and implicatures. An explicature is a propositional form communicated by an utterance which is pragmatically constructed on the basis of the propositional schema or template (logical form) that the utterance encodes; its content is an amalgam of linguistically decoded material and pragmatically inferred material. An implicature is any other propositional form communicated by an utterance; its content consists of wholly pragmatically inferred matter (see Sperber and Wilson 1986). So the
explicature / implicature distinction is a derivational distinction and, by definition, it arises only for verbal (or, more generally, code-based) ostensive communication. For example, an utterance of (1a), in an appropriate context, can express the proposition in (1b), which, if ostensively communicated, is an explicature; the same goes for the propositional form in (2b) expressed by an utterance of (2a):
- a. It's raining.
b. It's raining in Christchurch, New Zealand, at time tx.
- a. Bill ran into John and John stopped his car in an illegal position.
b. [ Billi
ran into John at tx ]P & [ as a result of P, Johnj stopped at tx+y in an illegal position ]
There are several points to note here: I. Since the content of explicatures is derived from the two distinct processes of decoding and pragmatic inference, different token explicatures which have the same propositional content may vary with regard to the relative contributions made by each of these processes. That is, they may vary in degree
of explicitness:
- a. Mary Jones put the book by Chomsky on the table in the downstairs sitting-room.
b. Mary put the book on the table.
c. She put it there.
d. On the table.
All of these could be used in different contexts to communicate explicitly one and the same propositional form. Clearly (3c) and (3d) leave a great deal more to pragmatic inference than does (3b), which in turn is less explicit than (3a).
II. The explicature / implicature distinction applies only to ostensively communicated assumptions, that is, to those that the speaker has made evident she intends the hearer to pick up.
III. On the basis of what has been said so far, it looks as if an utterance has a single
explicature, the proposition it expresses when that is communicated (endorsed) by the speaker. But in fact Sperber and Wilson's idea is that utterances typically have several explicatures. The logical form may be embedded in a range of different sorts of higher-level schemas, including speech-act and propositional-attitude descriptions.
IV. Although explicature is a term specific to a particular pragmatic theory, Relevance Theory, the phenomenon it picks out, at least at the first level, bears strong resemblances to that denoted by terms used in other frameworks, such as what is said as used by Recanati (1989, 1993), impliciture as used by Bach (1994) and the "pragmatic view" of context-sensitive saying defended by Travis (1985, 1997). | Robyn Carston, 2004
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