Pragmatic Aspects of Scalar Modifiers

Abstract

This book investigates pragmatic aspects of scalar modifiers. Through a detailed analysis of the semantics and pragmatics of comparatives with indeterminate pronouns, positive polarity minimizers, intensifiers, and expectation-reversal adverbs in Japanese and other languages, the book shows that scalarity is utilized not just for measuring a thing/event in the semantic level, but also for expressing various kinds of pragmatic information, including politeness, priority of utterance, the speaker’s attitude, and unexpectedness, at the level of conventional implicature (CI). The similarities and differences between at-issue and CI scalar meanings are analyzed using a multidimensional composition system (Potts 2005; McCready 2010). Two types of pragmatic scalar modifiers are proposed: a higher-level pragmatic scalar modifier, which utilizes an implicit pragmatic scale, and a lower-level pragmatic scalar modifier, which recycles the scale of an at-issue gradable predicate. The book also investigates the interpretations of pragmatic scalar modifiers that are embedded in the complement of an attitude predicate, and claims that there is a semantic shift from a CI to a secondary at-issue entailment in the case of non-speaker-oriented readings. It will also show that there is a phenomenon of “projection of not-at-issue meaning via modal support” in lower-level pragmatic scalar modifiers. Finally, the historical development of pragmatic scalar modifiers is also discussed. This book claims that although semantic scalar meanings and pragmatic (CI) scalar meanings are compositionally different, there is a relationship between the two, and it is important to look at both kinds of meaning in a uniform/flexible fashion.