Pragmatic resolutions of temporal and aspectual mismatches
This paper proposes a pragmatic solution to utterances where the various indicators of time and aspect (tenses,
lexical-conceptual features of Aktionsart, adverb phrases and contextual cues) seem to have divergent temporal reference and
aspectual properties. This type of cases is usually treated at the semantic level as ‘mismatches’ and resolved compositionally
through logical operations of ‘aspectual coercion’. We suggest on the contrary that no such effect of ‘mismatch resolution’ or
‘coercion’ is at work: these utterances are worked out inferentially according to the various pieces of evidence they provide for
their relevance, in line of Deirdre Wilson’s and Dan Sperber’s (1995) relevance theory. Such utterances give rise to
cognitive effects that are hardly attainable by apparently more literal formulations, while being cost-effective. Our analysis
follows the work of
Escandell-Vidal and Leonetti (2011) about the rigidity and thus
prevalence of computational linguistic expressions, called ‘procedural expressions’ by
Blakemore (1987) within
Sperber and Wilson’s (1995[1986]) framework,
relevance theory.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Mismatch resolution: Theoretical overview
- 3.Tense as aggregates
- 3.1Temporal and aspectual meanings of tenses: General and specific
- 3.2On tenses as procedural items
- 4.Principles in temporal and aspectual information management
- 4.1Principle 1: Procedural meaning forces conceptual compliance
- 4.2Principle 2: More specialized linguistic evidence is more relevant
- 4.3Principle 3: High contextual salience is mandatory information
- 5.Pragmatic imports
- 6.Concluding remarks
- Notes
-
References
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Piskorska, Agnieszka & Manuel Padilla Cruz
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