Semantics and pragmatics of indefinites: methodology for a synchronic and diachronic corpus study
Ana Aguilar‐Guevara, Maria Daria Aloni, Angelika Port, Radek Šimík, Machteld de Vos, Hedde Zeijlstra · UvA-DARE (University of Amsterdam) · 2011
The article discusses the methodology adopted for a cross-linguistic synchronic and diachronic corpus study on indefinites. The study covered five indefinite expressions, each in a different language. The main goal of the study was to verify the distribution of these indefinites synchronically and to attest their historical development. The methodology we used is a form of functional labeling which com-bines both context (syntax) and meaning (semantics) using as a starting point Haspelmath’s (1997) functional map. In the article we identify Haspelmath’s functions with logico-semantic interpreta-tions and propose a binary branching decision tree assigning each instance of an indefinite exactly one function in the map. 1 Theoretical Background It is well known that the use of expressions with existential meaning (e.g. plain in-definites like English somebody, or Czech někdo) can give rise to different pragmatic effects. Although the semantic representation of somebody in (1) and (2) is identical, (1) comes along with a free choice implicature (each individual is a permissible op-tion) and (2) with an ignorance implicature (the speaker does not know who called): (1) You can invite somebody. (2) Somebody called. From a typological perspective, many languages have developed specialized forms for such enriched meanings, such as free choice indefinites1: Spanish cualquier-series, Czech koli-series, Dutch dan ook-series,..., and as epistemic indefinites2: Russian to-series, Czech si-series, German irgend-series, Spanish algun-series,... Following Grice’s seminal work, the main hypothesis that motivates the present re-search is that these different indefinite forms have emerged as result of a process of conventionalization (or fossilization) of an originally pragmatic inference. In languages with Epistemic Indefinite (EI) forms, inference (3c), pragmatic in ori-gin, has been integrated into the semantic content of sentences like (4a).