Pragmatic Literature Research Articles

Conditionals and types of conditional perfection

In pragmatic literature, it is very well known that many conditional utterances invite conditional perfection as a non-monotonic inference or conversational implicature. In this paper, we argue that three types of conditional perfection have to be distinguished: two specific ones ( only if p, q and only if not p, not q), and a more general one ( if not p, then not q). In addition, we stipulate that these three types of conditional perfection correlate with different speech act types, and we explain this correlation in terms of the semantics and the pragmatics of the conditionals in question. Our analysis provides a valuable contribution to some controversies in current pragmatics, namely regarding the defeasibility of implicatures and the notion of conditional speech act.

LEXICAL REPLACEMENT AND THE LIKE(S)

This article investigates the function of like when it occurs in numerically quantified contexts. The pragmatic literature espouses two distinct positions on this topic, though neither has yet been tested empirically. On the one hand, like is argued to be a genuine pragmatic particle, indistinguishable from other discourse uses of this lexeme. Alternatively, others argue that in numerical contexts like carries propositional content and in this respect, it functions adverbially. Quantitative analysis from a large corpus of contemporary English suggests the latter: like is an approximative adverb, alternating with the more traditional form about in the spoken vernacular. However, the perspective afforded by apparent time reveals rapid, ongoing change whereby the traditional adverb is in the process of being ousted. The pattern of change therefore suggests lexical replacement. Among older speakers the preferred form for approximation is about, while among younger speakers the form of choice is like. These results thus indicate that what has previously been treated as a single entity, discourse like, is in fact two distinct forms: like the adverb and like the particle.

Honorification in Korean as Expressive Meaning

Abstract. Honorification in Korean elevates the social status of a participant in a clause with respect to the subject and/or the hearer. Honorific marking may occur as a nominal suffix, a special honor-ific form of a noun, an honorific case particle, an honorific marker on a verb, or a special honorific form of a verb. Previous accounts have proposed a specification [HON +], with unmarked forms typically being [HON -]. Our key idea is that honorific forms introduce a dimension of meaning, the expressive meaning of Potts (2005), which is privative, and hence simply absent from all non-honorific forms. All previous accounts fail with regard to three types of fact: first, the different expressions of 'honor-ification' do not mean exactly the same thing. Second, multiple expressions of honorific marking within the same clause progressively elevates the social status of the referent: the effect is cumula-tive. Third, under the traditional analysis, some nouns have to be given a spurious and ultimately inconsistent ambiguity. We further argue that it is mistaken to consider honorific marking to be 'agreement' between, say, a subject and a verb. This position puts us in contrast with all of the syn-tactic literature on Korean (and Japanese), and some of the semantic and pragmatic literature.

Sexualität und Emotionalität in der vor modernen Ehe by Rüdiger Schnell (review)

1072 Reviews that there is practically no reference to the huge?above all Western?literature on Eisenstein's film). Despite that, Perrie's book undoubtedly represents an important contribution to the growing area of research on the cultural history of the Stalin era. University of Nottingham Evgeny Dobrenko SexualitdtundEmotionalitdtin der vormodernenEhe. By Rudiger Schnell. Cologne: Bohlau. 2002. x + 595pp. ?59. ISBN 3-412-16001-6. This lengthy,richly informative, and impressive work contests the conventional view that before the eighteenth century love and marriage had little to do with each other. Schnell concedes that there are voices in the Middle Ages that categorically deny any such connection, but argues that it is wrong in principle to regard them as the only,or even the dominant, view in the Middle Ages. The subject of this book is therefore the presence of marital love before the modern period, and it polemicizes against the idea that the centuries before this were unrelievedly misogynous and misogamous. The author bases his argument almost entirely on pragmatic literature, devoting only his last chapter to what court literature of the twelfthand thirteenth centuries has to say. The opening chapter is a lengthy foundation for what follows. The author points out that marital affection could result from years of living together, so that love could arise in the course of marriage, which in itself qualifies any sweepingly negative view of medieval marriage. Especially valuable is what is said about the relationship of gender to nature and nurture, and, following this, the long critical survey of various positions adopted over the last fifty years on the question of sex and gender. Chapter 11deals with texts in which sex and marriage are treated in negative terms. In these texts (theological discourses) the body, equated with flesh, was seen as the site of sexual sinfulness, the loss of control by ratio over the body. In view of the recurrent equation of the body with woman (as opposed to that of the mind with man), the disobedience of the flesh could be seen, in a way repugnant to patriarchal society, as tantamount to the rule of woman over man. With Chapter 111we come to texts in which sympathy and friendly affection take the place of sexual love. The theological concept maritalis ajfectus therefore implies a moral disposition to help in all emergencies, a union of hearts for which Mary and Joseph act as a model and from which sexual longing is kept apart. Unlike the authors of vernacular literature, theologians for the most part saw no connection between loving feelings and sexuality (in drastic terms, why commit adultery if a wife was available?). One valuable collateral result of this chapter, however, is the suggestion that the doctrine of consensus prescribed by the Church from the twelfth century opened the door for the possibility of love in marriage. The argument changes tack in Chapter iv: texts which deal with emotional af? fection within the bonds of marriage. The wide range covered by marital amicitia in the Middle Ages suggests that, contrary to what has been long suggested, companionship in marriage was a reality long before the sixteenth century. To establish how faramicitia included emotional features, the semantics of this word, going back to Cicero , are studied; particular value attaches to the way in which this concept, originally denoting friendship among men, is applied to marriage (here Schnell could have derived assistance from Gerald A. Bond, The Loving Subject (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), not mentioned in his otherwise rich bibliography). Chapter v is concerned with the positive emotional dependence of a married couple on their sexual relationship, contradicting the opinion that,before 1600, love and sexu? ality were kept separate by theologians. This chapter argues its case by examples from theological texts, whereas the concluding chapter looks at earlier evidence in court MLRy 98.4, 2003 1073 narrative literature. Of interest is the suggestion that the theologians' secundae causae of marriage recur elsewhere as causae amoris, thus implying a possible combination of marriage with love. That this was feasible is seen as a concession by some clerics to the reality of laymen's experience. In Chapter vi Schnell confronts the question who...

The Language of Detecting Deceit

Techniques used to convince potential deceivers to tell the truth or to draw out information and cues to deception have long been part of the conventional wisdom of attorneys, police officers, investigative reporters, and other professionals who work with potential deceivers. A comprehensive search of this pragmatic literature yields myriad message strategies that these practitioners believe to be effective in obtaining accurate information and detecting deception. These diverse strategies were placed into a typology categorized by the ecumenical motivations facilitating truth-telling, increased information exchange, and cues to deceptive communication. Sample message tactics for implementing these overarching strategies are incorporated into this classification. This typology provides an organizational scheme for the diverse techniques drawn from pragmatic literature and can serve as a template or heuristic model for examining deception detection in interpersonal settings.

Intuitive Choice of Cooperative Sharing Mechanisms for Joint Cost Savings: Some Empirical Results

Cooperative sharing arrangements are common phenomena in modern business. Joint ventures are used in a variety of industries, where participants are provided the advantages inter alia of risk sharing, pooling of economic and managerial resources, and synergy. An important issue in any cooperative venture is the mechanism for sharing the common rewards of participation. While some studies have looked at actual ventures, the issue has not been explored empirically when alternative sharing arrangements were also under consideration and the practical considerations of ‘fairness’, ‘reasonableness’, and ‘understandability’ were also present. This study examines sharing arrangements proposed by neutral observers under experimental conditions to a potential cooperative sharing arrangement where these practical considerations are important. The results indicate that the more complex literature solutions were approximated by some neutral observers intuitively, but the more pragmatic literature solutions were chosen by most observers.

Financial Intermediation and the Theory of Agency

Intermediation, and in particular financial intermediation, is a frequently observed class of activities for which the literature provides little definition. Although intermediaries exist in major proportions of the economy, a precise characterization of an intermediary's function has not appeared. Rather, the academic and pragmatic literature refer to intermediaries by example, generally agreeing that such institutions as banks, insurance companies, etc., are intermediaries. This research addresses the issue of what an intermediary is; that is, what distinguishes the activity of intermediation from other economic activity.

Signs and practices: An expanded poetics

The very attempt to formalize, to define and justify the categories of literary analysis, that constitutes poetics, has necessary educational implications, making such analysis less esoteric in its assumptions, less parochial and more available to a broader, ‘uninitiated’ audience. But the kind of definitions and justifications one employs have even greater significance. After a decade or more of theory and research dominated by linguistic models, it is evident that new definitions and justifications are in order. In future, poetics must expand beyond syntactic and phonological analogies to confront the broader semiotic and pragmatic questions literature necessarily raises. The characteristic forms of literature - e.g. tropes and narrative - are not necessarily verbal and the signifying practices that produce literary texts cannot be adequately illuminated apart from a broader theory of praxis and culture. An expanded poetics of this sort could make education more coherent, suggesting connections between apparently separate disciplines and provoking questions about the kind of signs and signifying practices of which education itself is comprised.