Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Bibliography
Abercrombie N, Hill S & Turner B S (1980). The dominant
ideology thesis. London Boston: G. Allen & Unwin.
Ball T & Dagger R (1999). Political ideologies and the
democratic ideal. New York: Longman.
Billig M (1982). Ideology and social psychology. Oxford:
Basil Blackwell.
Billig M (1988). Ideological dilemmas: a social psychology of everyday thinking. London: Sage Publications.
Billig M (1991). Ideology and opinions: studies in rhetorical
psychology. London: Sage Publications.
Bourdieu P & Eagleton T (1994). Doxa and common life:
an interview. In Zizek S (ed.) Mapping ideology.
London: Verso. 265277.
Chilton P A (1995). Security metaphors. Cold war discourse
from containment to common house. New York: Lang.
Chilton P A (2004). Analysing political discourse: theory
and practice. London: Routledge.
Chilton P A & Scha ffner C (eds.) (2002). Politics as text
and talk: analytic approaches to political discourse. John
Benjamins: Amsterdam.
Duranti A & Goodwin C (eds.) (1992). Rethinking
context: language as an interactive phenomenon.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Eagleton T (1991). Ideology. An introduction. London:
Verso.
Eatwell R (ed.) (1999). Contemporary political ideologies.
New York: Pinter.
Fairclough N (1989). Language and power. London:
Longman.
Fairclough N (1995). Critical discourse analysis. The
critical study of language. London: Longman.
Fowler R (1991). Language in the news: discourse and
ideology in the British press. London and New York:
Routledge.
brings out patterns in the morphosyntactic organization of various languages. But he never dissociated
synchrony and diachrony, and he used the results of
comparative linguistics, dialectological research, and
historical grammar in constant interaction with his
synchronic and functional approach. Because of its
focus on languages not commonly considered in structuralist and generativist work, Polotskys work is,
unfortunately, mostly ignored by general linguists outside Israel (where in 1965 he received the Israel Prize
for his contribution to linguistic studies); the easiest
access to it is through the Collected papers (1971).
See also: Ancient Egyptian and Coptic; Hebrew, Israeli;
Semitic Languages; Structuralism; Syriac.
Bibliography
Hopkins S (1990). [1992]. H. J. Polotsky (19051991).
Rassegna di Studi Etiopici 34, 115125.
Osing J (1993). Hans Jakob Polotsky: 13. September
190510. August 1991. Zeitschrift fu r a gyptische
Sprache und Altertumskunde 120(1), iiiv.
Polotsky H J (19311933). Zur koptischen Lautlehre.
Zeitschrift fu r a gyptische Sprache 67, 7477; 69,
125129.
Polotsky H J (1938). E tudes de grammaire gourague . Bulletin de la Socie te de Linguistique de Paris 39, 137175.
Polotsky H J (1944). E tudes de syntaxe copte. Le Caire:
Socie te darche ologie copte.
Polotsky H J (1961). Studies in Modern Syriac. Journal of
Semitic Studies 6, 132.
Polotsky H J (1965). Egyptian tenses. Jerusalem: Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
Polotsky H J (1971). Collected papers. Jerusalem: Magnes.
Polotsky H J (1979). Verbs with two objects in Modern
Syriac (Urmi). Israel Oriental Studies 9, 204227.
Polotsky H J (19871991). Grundlagen des koptischen
Satzbaus (2 vols). Atlanta (Georgia): Scholars Press.
Ray J D (ed.) (1987). Lingua sapientissima: A seminar in
honour of H. J. Polotsky organised by the Fitzwilliam
Museum, Cambridge and the Faculty of Oriental Studies
in 1984. Cambridge: Faculty of Oriental Studies.
Rose n H B (ed.) (1964). Studies in Egyptology and linguistics
in honour of H. J. Polotsky. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration
Society.
Shisha-Halevy A (1992). In memoriam Hans Jakob
Polotsky. Orientalia 61, 208213.
Young D W (ed.) (1981). Studies presented to Hans Jakob
Polotsky. East Gloucester, MA: Pirtle & Polson.
Polysemy and homonymy both involve the association of a particular linguistic form with multiple
meanings, thus giving rise to lexical ambiguity.
Polysemy is rooted in a variety of semantic-pragmatic processes or relations through which meanings
of words extend or shift so that a single lexical item (a
polyseme) has several distinct senses. For example,
language is polysemous in that it can be used to
refer to the human linguistic capacity (Language
evolved gradually) or to a particular grammar and
lexis (Learn a new language!). The most clear-cut
cases of polysemy (versus homonymy) involve systematic (or regular) polysemy (Apresjan, 1974), in
which the relation between the senses is predictable
in that any word of a particular semantic class potentially has the same variety of meanings. For example,
words for openable coverings of apertures in built
structures (She rested against the door/gate/window)
are also used to refer to the aperture itself (Go
through the door/gate/window). In non-systematic
polysemy, the words two senses are semantically
related, but are not part of a larger pattern, as for
arm of government versus human arm. Within the
literature, theoretical considerations often lead
authors to use polysemy to refer only to either systematic or non-systematic polysemy, and so the term
must be approached with caution.
Homonyms, in contrast, are distinct lexemes that
happen to share the same form. They arise either
accidentally through phonological change or lexical
borrowing, or through some semantic or morphological drift such that a previously polysemous form is no
longer perceived as being the same word in all its
senses. Tattoo1 an ink drawing in the skin and tattoo2 a military drum signal calling soldiers back to
their quarters provide a clear example of homonymy,
in that the two words derive respectively from Polynesian ta-tau and Dutch taptoe turn off the tap
(which was also used idiomatically to mean to
stop). The formal identity of homonyms can involve
both the phonological and the written form, as for
tattoo. Homophones need only be pronounced the
same, as in tail and tale, and homographs share written form, but not necessarily phonological form, as in
wind /wInd/ and wind /waInd/. Homographs that are
not homophones are also called heteronyms.
Polysemy and homonymy are generally differentiated in terms of whether the meanings are related
or not: while polysemous lexical items involve a number of related meanings, homonyms, as accidentally
similar words, do not have any semantic relation to
each other. However, as discussed below, a clear distinction between polysemous and homonymous items
remains difficult to draw. Nevertheless, the need
to distinguish between them remains. For lexicographers, the distinction generally determines how many
entries a dictionary has homonyms are treated as
multiple entries, but all of a polysemes senses are
treated in one entry. For semanticists wishing to
discover constraints on or processes resulting in
polysemy, weeding out the homonymous cases is necessary. For those wishing to model the mental representation of lexical knowledge, the issue of semantic
(un)relatedness is similarly important.
Another definitional issue concerns the distinction
between polysemy and vagueness, in which a lexical
item has only one general sense. (Some authors refer
to this as monosemy.) This raises the question of how
different two usages of the same form need to be to
count as distinct polysemous senses rather than different instantiations of a single underlying sense. For
example, the word cousin can refer to either a male or
a female, but most speakers (and linguists) would not
view cousin as having distinct male cousin and female cousin senses. Instead, we regard it as vague
with respect to gender. A number of different methodologies and criteria have been used to draw the line
between polysemy and vagueness, but these are not
uncontroversial. The distinction is also influenced by
theoretical assumptions about the nature of lexical
meaning; thus, demarcation of senses is one of the
more controversial issues in lexical semantics.
presents a key challenge for natural language processing and drives much current polysemy research. In
this theory, systematic polysemy is generated by lexical rules of composition that operate on semantic
components specified in the representation of lexical
items (and so it could be seen as a development from
the early generative approaches). The main concern is
to account for regular types of meaning alternation
(such as the aperture-covering alternation of door and
adjectival meaning variation, as in fast car, fast typist,
fast decision, fast road, etc.) in a manner that avoids
the problems of simple enumeration of word senses in
the lexicon and explicates the systematic nature of
meaning variation in relation to the syntagmatic linguistic environment. The meaning variation of fast,
for example, is accounted for by treating the adjective
as an event predicate which modifies an event that is
specified as the head nouns function as part of its
compositional lexical representation.
Another significant strand of polysemy research
proceeds within Cognitive Linguistic approaches
(see Cognitive Linguistics; Cognitive Semantics).
The general aim is to study the kinds of conceptual
processes that motivate the multiple meanings of
linguistic forms and how these meanings may be
grounded in human experience. As it is argued that
lexical categories exhibit the same kind of prototype
structure as other conceptual categories, the relations
of polysemous senses are usually modeled in terms of
radial, family resemblance categories. In these polysemy networks, the senses are typically either directly
or indirectly related to a prototypical sense through
such meaning extensions processes as conceptual
metaphor and metonymy and image-schema transformations (Lakoff, 1987). As Cognitive Linguists also
assume that all of linguistic structure, including grammar, is meaningful, some work within this approach
has extended the applicability of the notions of polysemy and homonymy beyond lexical semantics to
grammatical categories and constructions (Goldberg,
1995) (see Construction Grammar). While most
other approaches dismiss homonymy as accidental
and uninteresting, the relevance of diachronic
See also: Cognitive Linguistics; Cognitive Semantics; Construction Grammar; Lexical Fields; Lexical Semantics:
Overview.
Bibliography
Apresjan J (1974). Regular polysemy. Linguistics 142,
533.
Bierwisch M (1983). Semantische und konzeptuelle Repra sentation lexikalischer Einheiten. In Ruzicka R &
Motsch W (eds.) Untersuchungen zur Semantik. Berlin:
Akademie-Verlag.
Blutner R (1998). Lexical pragmatics. Journal of Semantics
15, 115162.
Geeraerts D (1993). Vaguenesss puzzles, polysemys vagaries. Cognitive Linguistics 4, 223272.
Goldberg A E (1995). Constructions. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
Lakoff G (1987). Women, fire, and dangerous things.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Leech G (1974). Semantics. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
McCawley J D (1968). The role of semantics in a grammar.
In Bach E & Harms R T (eds.) Universals in linguistic
theory. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. 124169.
Nunberg G (1978). The pragmatics of reference. Bloomington,
IN: Indiana University Linguistics Club.
Petho G (2001). What is polysemy? In Nemeth E & Bibok
K (eds.) Pragmatics and the flexibility of word meaning.
Amsterdam: Elsevier. 175224.
Pustejovsky J (1995). The generative lexicon. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press.
Ravin Y & Leacock C (eds.) (2000). Polysemy. Oxford:
OUP.
Ruhl C (1989). On monosemy. Albany: SUNY Press.
Tuggy D (1993). Ambiguity, polysemy and vagueness.
Cognitive Linguistics 4, 273290.
In Example (2), only the base negh- and the inflectional -aa, are obligatory. Any or all of the other
suffixes, which are postbases, can be left out. The
element llu is an enclitic.
Inflection
(Nonproductive)
derivation
Productive
postbases
Syntax
[1] Productive?
[2] Recursion possible?
[3] Necessarily concatenative?
[4] Variable order of elements possible in some instances?
[5] Interaction with syntax possible?
[6] Lexical category changing possible?
Yes
No
No
No
Yes
No
No
No
No
No
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Bibliography
Anderson S R (1982). Wheres morphology? Linguistic
Inquiry 13, 571612.
de Reuse W J (1992). The role of internal syntax in the
historical morphology of Eskimo. In Aronoff M (ed.)
Morphology now. Albany: State University of New
York Press. 163178.
de Reuse W J (1994). Siberian Yupik Eskimo. The language
and its contacts with Chukchi. Salt Lake City: University
of Utah Press.
Fortescue M (1980). Affix-ordering in West Greenlandic
derivational processes. International Journal of
American Linguistics 46, 259278.
Mithun M & Gorbett G (1999). The effect of noun incorporation on argument structure. In Mereu L (ed.)
Pomoan Languages
S McLendon, City University of New York, NY, USA
2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Names
There was no single Pomo tribe or language, although maps and authors frequently so indicate.
Each of the seven languages was spoken by residents
of at least one, and usually several, politically independent towns, of which some 75 are known. By
2004, these have become amalgamated into 19 distinct federally recognized tribes. Speakers of the seven
languages did not have a single name for themselves
or for the family of languages as a whole. The name
Pomo, which now has that function, was first used
to refer to this family by Stephen Powers (1877: 5,
146), and has become increasingly used in the 20th
century. It derives from two distinct but similar
sounding Northern Pomo terms, one the name of an
earlier single town (See McLendon and Oswalt, 1978
for details).
English names for the individual languages were
developed by Samuel A. Barrett (1908), modeled on
native systems of referring to neighboring languages.
Internal Relations
Classifications of the interrelationships of these languages have been proposed by Barrett (1908: 100),
Alfred Kroeber (1925: 227), Abraham Halpern
(1964: 90), and Robert L. Oswalt (1964: 416).
Halpern was the first phonetically competent linguist
to collect data on all seven languages. He proposed
two slightly different classifications based on sound
shifts that he identified but never published. Oswalt
(1964: 413427) based his classification on a comparison of the 100-word lexicostatistical basic word
Bibliography
Anderson S R (1982). Wheres morphology? Linguistic
Inquiry 13, 571612.
de Reuse W J (1992). The role of internal syntax in the
historical morphology of Eskimo. In Aronoff M (ed.)
Morphology now. Albany: State University of New
York Press. 163178.
de Reuse W J (1994). Siberian Yupik Eskimo. The language
and its contacts with Chukchi. Salt Lake City: University
of Utah Press.
Fortescue M (1980). Affix-ordering in West Greenlandic
derivational processes. International Journal of
American Linguistics 46, 259278.
Mithun M & Gorbett G (1999). The effect of noun incorporation on argument structure. In Mereu L (ed.)
Pomoan Languages
S McLendon, City University of New York, NY, USA
2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Names
There was no single Pomo tribe or language, although maps and authors frequently so indicate.
Each of the seven languages was spoken by residents
of at least one, and usually several, politically independent towns, of which some 75 are known. By
2004, these have become amalgamated into 19 distinct federally recognized tribes. Speakers of the seven
languages did not have a single name for themselves
or for the family of languages as a whole. The name
Pomo, which now has that function, was first used
to refer to this family by Stephen Powers (1877: 5,
146), and has become increasingly used in the 20th
century. It derives from two distinct but similar
sounding Northern Pomo terms, one the name of an
earlier single town (See McLendon and Oswalt, 1978
for details).
English names for the individual languages were
developed by Samuel A. Barrett (1908), modeled on
native systems of referring to neighboring languages.
Internal Relations
Classifications of the interrelationships of these languages have been proposed by Barrett (1908: 100),
Alfred Kroeber (1925: 227), Abraham Halpern
(1964: 90), and Robert L. Oswalt (1964: 416).
Halpern was the first phonetically competent linguist
to collect data on all seven languages. He proposed
two slightly different classifications based on sound
shifts that he identified but never published. Oswalt
(1964: 413427) based his classification on a comparison of the 100-word lexicostatistical basic word
Figure 1 Probable territories of the seven Pomoan languages at the end of the 18th century around the time of first contact with
Europeans. Adapted from Figure 2, p. 276 of the Handbook of North American Indians, California-8 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian
Institution, 1978).
Figure 2 Proposed interrelationships between the seven Pomoan languages. A, B, Two alternative classifications proposed by
A,M, Halpern, 1964. C, Classification proposed by R. Oswalt, 1964. After Figure 1, p. 275 of the Handbook of North American Indians,
California-8 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978).
The seven Pomoan languages have far more consonants than English. Unaspirated, aspirated, and
glottalized (or ejective) stops contrast at labial
(p, ph, p), dental (t, th, t), alveolar (t. , .t h, .t) , palatal
(c, ch, c), velar (k, kh, k), and postvelar (q, qh, q)
places of articulation, in Kashaya, Central Pomo and
the undergoer/patient of the action, and type or manner of action, as well as the instrument. These combine with roots to form stems. In Northern Pomo,
Central Pomo, Southern Pomo, and Southeastern
Pomo, vowels in initial syllables are elided or assimilated, collapsing what are historically several prefixes
into a single consonant, obscuring the system.
The Pomoan languages are stative-active languages, most of an unusual type that can be called
fluid stative-active. That is, verbs can appear with an
argument in either the agentive or the patient case,
depending on the speakers perception of the degree
of control the protagonist had in the action. Thus in
Eastern Pomo, one can say:
ha
cexel-k-a
1SG.AG slip/slide-PUNCTUAL-DIRECT
Im sliding (as on a sled or skis,
deliberately)
or:
wi
cexel-k-a
1SG.Pat slip/slide-PUNCTUAL-DIRECT
Im slipping (accidentally, as on a
banana peel, or patch of ice)
Historical Relationships
Many cognates can be found between the seven languages, demonstrating clear sound correspondences.
These usually involve small shifts in sound: either
adjustments in place of articulation postvelars
becoming velars, for example, or in manner of articulation aspirated voiceless stops becoming fricatives.
Much more sweeping in their effects are the prosodically conditioned syntagmatic changes that largely
affect vowels in particular positions.
If one only looks at lexical comparisons, the languages seem extremely close. However, they show
considerable differences in grammatical structure.
When the same category exists, it is frequently
expressed by a totally different, not cognate, form in
the various languages. When languages have reflexes
of the same morpheme, that morpheme may well
behave in quite different ways or occur in different
relative positions (see McLendon, 1973 and Oswalt,
1976 for details).
See also: Active/Inactive Marking; Hokan Languages;
United States of America: Language Situation.
Bibliography
Barrett S A (1908). The ethnogeography of the Pomo and
neighboring Indians. In University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, 6(1).
Berkeley: University of California Press. 1332.
Halpern A M (1964). A report on a survey of Pomo
languages. In Bright W (ed.) Studies in Californian linguistics. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
8893.
Kroeber A L (1925). Handbook of the Indians of California.
Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 78, 1995
Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
McLendon S (1973). Proto Pomo. In University of California Publications in Linguistics, 71. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
McLendon S (1975). A grammar of Eastern Pomo. In
University of California Publications in Linguistics, 75.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
McLendon S (1978a). Ergativity, case and transitivity
in Eastern Pomo. International Journal of American
Linguistics 44, 19.
McLendon S (1978b). How languages die: a social history
of unstable bilingualism among the Eastern Pomo. In
Langdon M, Klar K & Silver S (eds.) American Indian
and Indo-European studies: papers in honor of Madison
Beeler. The Hague: Mouton. 137150.
McLendon S (1979). Clitics, clauses, closures and discourse
in Eastern Pomo. In Proceedings of the Fifth Annual
Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society. Berkeley:
Berkeley Linguistic Society. 637646.
Ponca
See: Omaha-Ponca.
Ponka
See: Omaha-Ponca.
Ponca
See: Omaha-Ponca.
Ponka
See: Omaha-Ponca.
Bibliography
Dimitriu I G (1963). Sever Pop. Orbis 12, 584586.
Griera A (1961). Sever Pop. Boletn de Dialectologa
Espanola 36, 7172.
Heinimann S (1961). Sever Pop, 19011961. Vox Romanica 20, 101104.
Hommage a` la me moire de Sever Pop (1961). Orbis 10,
IXVI.
Pop A S (1980). Sever Pop: sa vie et moments de lhistorique
de lAtlas linguistique roumain. Gembloux: Duculot.
Pop R D (1956). Sever Pop: notice biographique et bibliographique. Louvain: C.I.D.G.
Pop S (1927). Buts et methodes des enquetes dialectales.
Paris: Gamber.
Pop S (1938a). Atlasul lingvistic roman I. Cluj: Muzeul
limbii roma ne. French adapt. (1962). Gembloux: Duculot.
Pop S (1938b). Micul atlas lingvistic roman I. Cluj: Muzeul
limbii romane.
Bibliography
Dimitriu I G (1963). Sever Pop. Orbis 12, 584586.
Griera A (1961). Sever Pop. Boletn de Dialectologa
Espanola 36, 7172.
Heinimann S (1961). Sever Pop, 19011961. Vox Romanica 20, 101104.
Hommage a` la memoire de Sever Pop (1961). Orbis 10,
IXVI.
Pop A S (1980). Sever Pop: sa vie et moments de lhistorique
de lAtlas linguistique roumain. Gembloux: Duculot.
Pop R D (1956). Sever Pop: notice biographique et bibliographique. Louvain: C.I.D.G.
Pop S (1927). Buts et methodes des enquetes dialectales.
Paris: Gamber.
Pop S (1938a). Atlasul lingvistic roman I. Cluj: Muzeul
limbii romane. French adapt. (1962). Gembloux: Duculot.
Pop S (1938b). Micul atlas lingvistic roman I. Cluj: Muzeul
limbii romane.
Popularizations 755
Bibliography
Alpatov V M (1996). Nikolai Nicholas Poppe. Moscow:
Vostochnaia Literatura.
Cirtautas A M (1977). Nicholas Poppe: bibliography of
publications from 1924 to 1977. Seattle: Institute for
Comparative and Foreign Area Studies, University of
Washington.
Cirtautas A M (1989). Bibliography of Nicholas Poppe:
19771987. In Heissig W & Sagaster K (eds.) Gedanke
und Wirkung: Festschrift zum 90. Geburtstag von Nikolaus Poppe. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. xxvi.
Poppe N N (1931). Praktic eski uc ebnik mongolskogo
razgovornogo iazyka (xalxaskoe narechie). Leningrad:
Akademia Nauk.
Popularizations
J Corbett, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK
2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
The study of popularizations of specialist texts, mainly from the sciences, is an offshoot of genre analysis.
The attraction of popularizations is that they allow
cross-genre comparison of texts that discuss the same
topic for different readerships, usually specialists and
nonspecialists. The crossgenre comparison of specialist texts and popularizations also affords insights into
the social construction and discursive negotiation of
scientific facts. Hyland (2000: 104131) also considers relationships between expert and novice academic discourses, comparing research articles to
textbooks and paying particular attention to the
construction of authority in each genre.
Popularizations are characterized in opposition to
specialist journals and books produced by professionals mainly for peer-group readers. Bazerman
(1988) traced the historical development of specialists
writing in the sciences, arguing that the form of such
writing was originally conditioned by the requirement that readers should be able to replicate the
experiments described. Popularizations encompass
films, television documentaries and dramas, newspaper articles, and reports and features in magazines
like Scientific American and New Scientist, whose
readership includes nonspecialists as well as scientists
whose interests extend beyond their own discipline.
The shift in genre from specialist to popular text raises
issues of the interaction of the various participants
in the communicative events and in the linguistic
construction of the scientists and their activities.
Popularizations 755
Bibliography
Alpatov V M (1996). Nikolai Nicholas Poppe. Moscow:
Vostochnaia Literatura.
Cirtautas A M (1977). Nicholas Poppe: bibliography of
publications from 1924 to 1977. Seattle: Institute for
Comparative and Foreign Area Studies, University of
Washington.
Cirtautas A M (1989). Bibliography of Nicholas Poppe:
19771987. In Heissig W & Sagaster K (eds.) Gedanke
und Wirkung: Festschrift zum 90. Geburtstag von Nikolaus Poppe. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. xxvi.
Poppe N N (1931). Prakticeski ucebnik mongolskogo
razgovornogo iazyka (xalxaskoe narechie). Leningrad:
Akademia Nauk.
Popularizations
J Corbett, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK
2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
The study of popularizations of specialist texts, mainly from the sciences, is an offshoot of genre analysis.
The attraction of popularizations is that they allow
cross-genre comparison of texts that discuss the same
topic for different readerships, usually specialists and
nonspecialists. The crossgenre comparison of specialist texts and popularizations also affords insights into
the social construction and discursive negotiation of
scientific facts. Hyland (2000: 104131) also considers relationships between expert and novice academic discourses, comparing research articles to
textbooks and paying particular attention to the
construction of authority in each genre.
Popularizations are characterized in opposition to
specialist journals and books produced by professionals mainly for peer-group readers. Bazerman
(1988) traced the historical development of specialists
writing in the sciences, arguing that the form of such
writing was originally conditioned by the requirement that readers should be able to replicate the
experiments described. Popularizations encompass
films, television documentaries and dramas, newspaper articles, and reports and features in magazines
like Scientific American and New Scientist, whose
readership includes nonspecialists as well as scientists
whose interests extend beyond their own discipline.
The shift in genre from specialist to popular text raises
issues of the interaction of the various participants
in the communicative events and in the linguistic
construction of the scientists and their activities.
756 Popularizations
Popularization as Process
The process of popularization, particularly by journalists, has been variously characterized. van Dijck
(1998: 910) describes the dominant view of popularization as diffusion: research findings by an elite
group of geniuses are simplified and inevitably distorted by journalists in order to enlighten ignorant
nonspecialists, some of whom might be resistant to
change particularly change that threatens established social norms and values. A typical example of
diffusion would be the press treatment and public
reception of the cloning of Dolly the sheep. Biotechnological innovation triggers popular accounts that
stimulate public debate on the ethics of cloning, a
debate that in turn informs political regulations and
access or nonaccess to further research funding. Diffusion is a linear process that assumes a division
between science and society, mediated by popularizations. However, more recent models see popularization as part of a nonlinear, dynamic process of
translation and negotiation, whereby scientists align
themselves with other social groups to contest and
redefine the public meanings of scientific discoveries.
This view is consistent with specialists own contribution to popularization and dissolves diffusions dichotomy between specialist and nonspecialist groups.
As van Dijck (1998: 10) observed:
Despite their powerful position on the discursive hierarchy, scientists have never had absolute authority over the
interpretation of knowledge, and thus had to look for
effective strategies to propel and defend a specific interested position [. . .]
Popularizations are therefore a forum in which specialists can attempt to form alliances and engage in negotiating the public meaning of specialist knowledge.
Popularizations 757
Both passages explain the purpose of the research. The nominal groups in the specialist article
are generally abstractions: ideas, structure, result,
hypotheses, and so on. The popularization also has
abstractions like ecological studies, conditions,
information, extinction, and predation, but it focuses on concrete phenomena too: brittlestar beds
and fossils. Crucially, the popularization glosses the
significance of combining palaeoecology and ecological studies: to work out what really happened to the
suspension feeders. Therefore whereas the specialist
article remains within the domain of inferences and
hypotheses, the popularization focuses on the natural
world what really happened.
The narratives of science and nature diverge in
other respects. One key difference is in the representation of the specialist. Nelkin (1995: 17) noted that
in popular esteem, Science appears to the activity of
lonely geniuses whose success reflects their combination of inspiration and dedication to their work. van
Dijck (1998: 18) discussed a variety of popular
stereotypes: obsessed maniacs, arrogant hermits or
unworldy virtuosos. When representing themselves
in popularizations, scientists are certainly active participants in the natural world Aronsons popular
article, for example has passages in which he and a
postgraduate student dive into the rough waters
around the Isle of Man to view an immense carpet
of brittlestars. In the specialist article, there are few
or no accounts of personal agency: experiments are
758 Popularizations
Jordanova, 1989; Lynch and Woolgar, 1990). Looking is an archetypal occupation of the scientist in
popular representations, where white-coated boffins
are seen staring into microscopes or at computer
monitors. Dawkins discussion of willow seeds begins
with him, in his Oxford home, looking through a
pair of binoculars. The myth of unmediated contact
with nature through simple observation permeates
popular representations of science and obscures the
manner in which scientific concepts are often constructs of experimental procedures. Moreover,
Myers (1990: 158165) argued that the visual content of popularizations is more important than in
specialist articles because it both aestheticizes scientific activity and again conceals methodological
issues. Myers gives an example of a popular article
on the physiology of garter snakes that includes an
illustration of the pathway by which a pheronome
reaches the snakes skin. Such visual illustrations
give a sense that one is seeing the organism directly,
rather than through the mediation of scientific theory
and experiment (Myers, 1990: 1612). No equivalent illustration appears in research articles on the
same subject by the same writers; instead the specialist articles present arguments that present the pathway visually presented in the popularization as fact
as strong probability. Examinations of the distribution of modal auxiliaries and adverbs confirm that
popularizations are less likely to contain hedges than
specialist texts again, scientific hypotheses are more
likely to be presented as facts in the public domain.
Nonscientific Popularizations
Less research has been done in popularizations beyond the domains of science and technology. Partly
this is because the division between specialist and
nonspecialist discourse is not seen to be so absolute,
for example, in humanities disciplines such as history
or literature. Becher (1989) related the forms of communication across disciplines to the different communicative relations operating in their respective
discourse communities. The urban hard sciences,
so characterized because of the high density of
researchers working in narrow research areas, can
rely on a considerable number of fellow specialists
sharing a high level of schematic knowledge about
recognized research topics and appropriate experimental procedures. The rural humanities, where
only a few researchers might populate any given research area, cannot rely on the same degree of schematic knowledge, and therefore often have to explain
the relevance of their topic and justify the validity of
their approach even to fellow specialists. Specialist
Bibliography
Adams Smith D E (1987). Variation in field-related genres.
ELR Journal 1, 1032.
Aronson R (1987). A murder mystery from the mesozoic.
New Scientist 8 October, 5659.
Aronson R & Sues H-D (1987). The palaeoecological significance of an anachronistic ophiuroid community. In
Kerfoot W C & Sih A (eds.) Predation: direct and indirect
impacts on aquatic communities. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England. 355366.
Bazerman C (1988). Shaping written knowledge: the genre
and activity of the experimental article in science. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Becher T (1989). Academic tribes and territories. Milton
Keynes: Open University Press.
Carey J (ed.) (1995). The Faber book of science. London
and Boston: Faber and Faber.
Cooter R & Pumphrey S (1994). Separate spheres and
public places: reflections on the history of science popularisation and science in popular culture. History of
Science 32, 237267.
Dawkins R (1986). The blind watchmaker. London: Longman. [excerpt in Carey (ed.).] 482487.
Hyland K (2000). Disciplinary discourses: social interactions in academic writing. London: Longman.
Jordanova L (1989). Sexual visions: images of gender in
science and medicine between the enlightenment and
the twentieth century. Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press.
Lightman B (1997). The voices of nature popularizing
Victorian science. In Lightman B (ed.) Victorian science
in context. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
187211.
Lynch M & Woolgar S (eds.) (1990). Representation in
scientific practice. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Myers G (1985). Nineteenth century popularisations of
thermodynamics and the rhetoric of social prophecy.
Victorian Studies 29, 3566.
Myers G (1989). The pragmatics of politeness in scientific
articles. Applied Linguistics 10(1), 135.
1275).
Bibliography
Barnes J (2003). Porphyry: introduction. Translated with
commentary. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Bidez J (1913). Vie de Porphyre, le ne o-platonicien. Gand:
van Goethem.
Busse A (1887). Porphyrii Isagoge et in Aristotelis Categorias
commentarium. Berlin: Reimer.
Do rrie H et al. (1966). Entretiens sur lAntiquite classique
XII: Porphyre. Vandoeuvres/Gene`ve: Fondation Hardt.
Girgenti G (1994). Porfirio negli ultimi cinquantanni.
Bibliografia sistematica e ragionata della letteratura
primaria e secondaria riguardante il pensiero porfiriano
e i suoi influssi storici. Milan: Vita e Pensiero.
Lloyd A C (1970). Porphyry and Iamblichus. In Armstrong
A H (ed.) The Cambridge history of later Greek and early
medieval philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. 283301.
Smith A (1974). Porphyrys place in the Neoplatonic tradition. A study in post-Plotinian Neoplatonism. The
Hague: Nijhoff.
1275).
Bibliography
Barnes J (2003). Porphyry: introduction. Translated with
commentary. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Bidez J (1913). Vie de Porphyre, le neo-platonicien. Gand:
van Goethem.
Busse A (1887). Porphyrii Isagoge et in Aristotelis Categorias
commentarium. Berlin: Reimer.
Dorrie H et al. (1966). Entretiens sur lAntiquite classique
XII: Porphyre. Vandoeuvres/Gene`ve: Fondation Hardt.
Girgenti G (1994). Porfirio negli ultimi cinquantanni.
Bibliografia sistematica e ragionata della letteratura
primaria e secondaria riguardante il pensiero porfiriano
e i suoi influssi storici. Milan: Vita e Pensiero.
Lloyd A C (1970). Porphyry and Iamblichus. In Armstrong
A H (ed.) The Cambridge history of later Greek and early
medieval philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. 283301.
Smith A (1974). Porphyrys place in the Neoplatonic tradition. A study in post-Plotinian Neoplatonism. The
Hague: Nijhoff.
contributed to the fame of Port-Royal. The PortRoyalists believed that many of the social, religious,
and political problems of France could be resolved
through the Augustinian teachings. These clashes between the Jansenists of Port-Royal and the Jesuits who
exercised both religious and political power contributed to the publicity and fame of Port-Royal. Also, since
Jansenism was not favored by the government, it was
naturally made popular in the salons of Paris. It goes
without saying that Having undergone spiritual regeneration, they soon discovered they were surrounded
by unreconstructed, hostile forces . . . they soon discovered that the crown too was unfavorably disposed to
them (Sedwick, 1977: 195). To advance their philosophical and religious views, the Jansenists founded the
petites-ecoles that lasted only 22 years, but their influence far exceeded their short life. The Abbe de Saint
Cyran founded the school with the purpose of training
clerics. Six boys would be chosen as is indicated by the
letter mentioned in Sainte-Beuve (1954: 418). However, the plan was soon changed to a school with a
traditional education with a Jansenist/Port-Royal philosophy. This is important because the Port-Royal
philosophy of children and childrens education is the
center of the teaching manuals, the GGR, and the
logique (Fontaine (1696), 1887: 33; Carre, 1971: XV;
Lancelot, 1968). The Jansenists believed that, as a consequence of the Fall, childrens souls were possessed by
the devil, and only through baptism, innocence may be
restored. But since children are defenseless to the temptations, the responsibility is left to the parents and
educators. Thus, education should stress reason and
good judgment. The development of such thinking
would fall on the methods used by the teachers. The
GGR and the logique were part of the plan for the
development of good judgment and clear thinking.
Nicole, in the preface of the logique states There is
nothing more laudable than good sense and the correctness of the mind in distinguishing the true from the
false. (Arnauld and Nicole, 1662: 5). In fact, the success of the logique continued long after the GGR. There
were 49 printings in French, 13 in Latin, and nine in
English. It was published two years after the GGR, but
it was actually written about the same time. If one was
to look at the educational materials of Port-Royal, one
would conclude that Lancelot and his coauthor
Arnauld and Nicole and many of the other pedagogues
used incredibly advanced methods for teaching. Lancelot, an unassuming teacher at Port-Royal, taught and
coauthored grammars such as La nouvelle methode
Latine. The New Method was so successful that he
used the same methodology for Greek, followed by
Greek Roots, Spanish, and Italian. In all his work
Lancelot pursued the goal of devising new, less painful methods of learning a language. (Tsiapera and
Wheeler, 1993: 109).
Traditionally, students learned to read and write
Latin using the direct method, but the petites-e coles
taught French and then Latin. The students read
the Latin materials in French before going to the
original. Lancelot discussed his method in a letter to
de Sacy (Carre , 1887: 70). The concern with language
at Port-Royal was based on the premise that the
trivium grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic were
the prerequisites for the quadrivium. By the 17th
century, basic reading and mathematical skills were
necessary for upward mobility into the middle classes, but for the Port-Royal the aims were much higher.
The study of language led to clear thinking and good
judgment. The New Method of teaching that
became the system used at the petites-e coles was successful for a number of reasons: (a) it greatly improved the study of languages; (b) up to this point
grammars of any language were written in Latin; (c)
the GGR was a scientific and philosophical treatise
written in French that moved away from prescriptivism, although not altogether original. Arnauld and
Lancelot combined their ideas with those of their
predecessors. The 17th and 18th centuries considered
it original and a change in direction. Finally, it set the
precedent for grammars to be written in the vernacular rather than in Latin, which resulted in the great
success of Port-Royal grammars. The grammars written before in Latin were quickly forgotten.
Bibliography
Arnauld A (1964). Oeuvres de messire Antoine Arnauld,
docteur de la maison et societe de Sorbonne. Brussels:
Culture et civilisation.
Arnauld A & Lancelot C (1968). Grammaire ge ne rale et
raisone e de Port-Royal. Geneva: Slatkine Reprints.
Arnauld A & Lancelot C (1972). Grammaire ge ne rale et
raisone e/La Logique ou lart de parler. Geneva: Slatkine
Reprints.
Arnauld A & Lancelot C (1975). General and
rational grammar: the Port-Royal grammar. The Hague:
Mouton.
Arnauld A & Nicole P (1964). The art of thinking: PortRoyal logic. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co.
Arnauld A & Nicole P (1965). La logique ou lart de penser.
Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Beard C (1861). Port-Royal: a contribution to the history of
religion and literature in France. London: Longman,
Green, Longman, and Roberts.
language, which is based upon the speech of the central region between Lisbon and Coimbra.
There are no specific areas of bilingualism, although the return of migrant workers from the
north of Europe and the tourist boom of recent decades in the Algarve have brought significant numbers
of native or near-native speakers of other languages
into permanent residence in the country. English and
French are the principal foreign languages taught in
Portuguese schools. Levels of illiteracy are still among
the highest in Europe, although considerable progress
has been made in recent years, with a government
estimate of 29% of the adult population as illiterate
in 1970 falling to 16% in 1985.
See also: Portuguese; Spain: Language Situation.
Bibliography
Vazquez Cuesta P & Mendes da Luz M A (1983). Gramatica da Lngua Portuguesa. Lisbon: Edicoes Setenta.
Portuguese
A T de Castilho
2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
This article is reproduced from the previous edition, volume 6,
pp. 32343236, 1994, Elsevier Ltd.
History
Portuguese is a Romance language, belonging, with
Spanish and CatalanValencianBalear (Catalan), to
the IberoRomance subgroup (see Catalan; Romance
Languages; Spanish).
language, which is based upon the speech of the central region between Lisbon and Coimbra.
There are no specific areas of bilingualism, although the return of migrant workers from the
north of Europe and the tourist boom of recent decades in the Algarve have brought significant numbers
of native or near-native speakers of other languages
into permanent residence in the country. English and
French are the principal foreign languages taught in
Portuguese schools. Levels of illiteracy are still among
the highest in Europe, although considerable progress
has been made in recent years, with a government
estimate of 29% of the adult population as illiterate
in 1970 falling to 16% in 1985.
See also: Portuguese; Spain: Language Situation.
Bibliography
Vazquez Cuesta P & Mendes da Luz M A (1983). Gramatica da Lngua Portuguesa. Lisbon: Edicoes Setenta.
Portuguese
A T de Castilho
2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
This article is reproduced from the previous edition, volume 6,
pp. 32343236, 1994, Elsevier Ltd.
History
Portuguese is a Romance language, belonging, with
Spanish and CatalanValencianBalear (Catalan), to
the IberoRomance subgroup (see Catalan; Romance
Languages; Spanish).
Portuguese 763
Characteristics of Portuguese
In both Europe and Latin America, Portuguesespeaking countries are bordered by Spanish-speaking
ones; there are, however, a few differences separating
the two languages. The following sentences can be
used to exemplify some of these differences, as well as
those between European Portuguese (EP) and Brazilian
Portuguese (BP).
Portuguese: A mulher comprou os ovos mais lindos
da feira. (1)
The woman bought the eggs most beautiful of the
market.
Se tivesse mais dinheiro, levaria tambe m para sua
irma . (2)
If (she) had more money, (she) would take (some) also
to her sister.
Syntactic Characteristics
The Verb Portuguese maintains the distinction between the preterito perfeito simples simple preterite
(comprou), used to express the perfective aspect, and
the preterito perfeito composto compound preterite
(tem comprado), used for the imperfect aspect; the
auxiliary for the compound tense in Portuguese is ter.
There is a tendency, however, for the corresponding
Spanish forms (compro and ha comprado) to have lost
this distinction; moreover, the auxiliary for Spanish
is haber. Portuguese distinguishes the imperfeito do
subjunctivo imperfect subjunctive (tivesse), which is
a subordinate tense, from the mais que perfeito do
indicativo pluperfect indicative (tivera), which indicates the distant past. Spanish has lost the imperfeito
do subjunctivo, replacing it with the mais que perfeito
do indicativo (si tuviera ma s plata).
The Adjective The comparative degree is formed
with reflexes of Latin magis in both Portuguese and
764 Portuguese
Varieties of Portuguese
EP presents a notable lack of differentiation, with
the variety of Lisbon providing the standard. The
substitution of [v] for [b], the apico-alveolar pronunciation of [s] and [z], the maintenance of the
affricate [ts], and the maintenance of the diphthongs
[aw] and [ow], distinguish the dialects of the north
(Trasmontano, Interamnense, Beirao) from those
of the south (Estremenho, Alentejano, Algarvio). In
Portuguese territory, various varieties of Leone s are
also spoken: Rionore s, Guadramile s, and Mirande s.
The introduction of EP to Brazil began in the 16th
century. There it came into contact with the 300 indigenous languages spoken by approximately 1 million
individuals, as well as with those of some 18 million Negro slaves from the Bantu and Sudanese cultures who were brought to the country over a period
of three centuries. BP went through three historical
phases: (a) 15331654, a phase of bilingualism with
a strong predominance of Tupinamba (Old Tupi);
(b) 16541880, a phase during which Old Tupi gave
way to creole varieties; and (c) after 1808, a phase
Galician;
Romance
Languages;
Spanish.
Bibliography
Camara J M (1975). Histo ria e Estrutura da Lingua
Portuguesa. Rio de Janeiro: Padrao.
Castilho A T de (ed.) (1991). Grama tica do Portugue s
Falado 1. Campinas: Editora da UNICAMP.
Cintra L F L (1959). A Linguagem dos Foros de Castelo
Rodrigo. Lisbon: CEF.
Cunha C & Cintra L F L (1985). Nova Grama tica do
Lngua Portugue s Contempora neo. Rio de Janeiro:
Nova Fronteira.
Holanda-Ferreira A B (1986). Novo Diciona rio da Lngua
Portuguesa (2nd edn.). Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira.
Possession, Adnominal
M Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Stockholm University,
Stockholm, Sweden
2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
In the following sections, the main areas of crosslinguistic variation within adnominal possession are
presented briefly, without doing real justice to the
vast literature on the topic.
Form
A number of languages use juxtapositional PNPs,
which lack any overt marker to specify the relation
between the possessee and the possessor (Example
(1)). Most PNPs, however, involve one or several
construction markers to show explicitly that the
possessor and the possessee are related in a specific
way. Construction markers are either morphologically bound to the possessor (dependent-marking), to
the possessee (head-marking), or to both (doublemarking), or appear as analytic (unbound) elements.
Example (1) shows juxtaposition for Singaporean
Malay:
(1) pisang
Ali
banana Ali
Alis banana
Galician;
Romance
Languages;
Spanish.
Bibliography
Camara J M (1975). Historia e Estrutura da Lingua
Portuguesa. Rio de Janeiro: Padrao.
Castilho A T de (ed.) (1991). Gramatica do Portugues
Falado 1. Campinas: Editora da UNICAMP.
Cintra L F L (1959). A Linguagem dos Foros de Castelo
Rodrigo. Lisbon: CEF.
Cunha C & Cintra L F L (1985). Nova Gramatica do
Lngua Portugues Contemporaneo. Rio de Janeiro:
Nova Fronteira.
Holanda-Ferreira A B (1986). Novo Dicionario da Lngua
Portuguesa (2nd edn.). Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira.
Possession, Adnominal
M Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Stockholm University,
Stockholm, Sweden
2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
In the following sections, the main areas of crosslinguistic variation within adnominal possession are
presented briefly, without doing real justice to the
vast literature on the topic.
Form
A number of languages use juxtapositional PNPs,
which lack any overt marker to specify the relation
between the possessee and the possessor (Example
(1)). Most PNPs, however, involve one or several
construction markers to show explicitly that the
possessor and the possessee are related in a specific
way. Construction markers are either morphologically bound to the possessor (dependent-marking), to
the possessee (head-marking), or to both (doublemarking), or appear as analytic (unbound) elements.
Example (1) shows juxtaposition for Singaporean
Malay:
(1) pisang
Ali
banana Ali
Alis banana
Finally, the various head-marking and dependentmarking techniques can combine in double-marked
PNPs, as shown in Example (2c) for Hungarian:
(2c) a szomsze d-nak a
kert-je
the neighbor-DAT the garden-3SG.POSS.NOM
the neighbors garden
Functions
As is well known, English PNPs with s-genitives
refer not only to LEGAL OWNERSHIP, KIN relations, or
BODY-PART (person/animal) relations, but also to DISPOSAL (Marys office), AUTHOR or ORIGINATOR (Marys
poem), CARRIER OF PROPERTIES (Marys cleverness), SOCIAL RELATIONS (Marys neighbor), and many other
relations. Even inanimate possessors are allowed in
such NPs, e.g., to refer to PART-WHOLE relations (the
mountains top) and TEMPORAL and LOCATIVE relations
(Mondays performance, Stockholms banks). It has
been suggested that the common semantic (or pragmatic) denominator in the majority of PNPs is the
function of the possessors as anchors (Hawkins,
1991; Fraurud, 1990), or as reference point entities
(Langacker, 1995) for identification of the heads
referents. Thus, knowing who Mary is, we can identify Marys house, daughter, foot, neighbor, etc. The
exact interpretation of a particular PNP is, however,
dependent on three main factors:
1. Semantics of the head (possessee) e.g., its
relationality, that is, whether it invokes a special
relation to another entity, or, more generally, its
qualia structure (Pustejovsky, 1998) (see Nouns).
2. Ontological class and discourse status of the dependent (possessor) e.g., whether it is human vs.
animate vs. inanimate, and topical vs. non-topical.
3. Context.
Languages vary considerably in how these factors
interact, particularly in regard to how many structurally different PNPs they have, what motivates the
choice among those, and what relations each of
them may cover.
Co-occurrence of several different possessive constructions in the same language occurs frequently.
A choice among the constructions often depends on
the nature of the possessee and/or on its exact relation
to the possessor. The following examples illustrate
for Maltese (Semitic) the opposition between inalienable (Example (3a)) and alienable (Example (3b))
possession, or the alienability split:
(3a) bin is-sulta n
son DEF-king
the kings son
..
(3b) is-siggu
ta
DEF-chair
of
Peters chair
id
ir-ragel
hand DEF-man
the mans hand
Pietru
Peter
construction and the innovative, alienable construction (see Koptjevskaja-Tamm, 1996; Heine, 1997).
The cross-linguistically most frequently occurring
alienability splits involve an opposition between one
closed and one open nominal class. Multiple closed
classes are also attested: e.g., Nez Perce (Sahaptian,
United States) has three classes, Burushaski (isolate,
India) has four classes, and Amele (Madang, Papua
New Guinea) has 32 classes. Multiple classification is
particularly prominent (but still rare) in Melanesia
(Bickel and Nichols, 2005b). A number of languages,
particularly in the Americas (Bickel and Nichols,
2005b), have obligatorily possessed nouns. As shown
in Examples (4a) and (4b), in Yucatec Maya, inalienable body part terms never occur outside
PNPs (Lehmann, 1996: 50, 54). Conversely, in some
languages, certain nominals can never be possessed
unless they take special additional morphemes.
(4a) in
chi
mouth
my mouth
1SG.POSS
(4b) *le
chi(-tsil)-o
DEFmouth(-ABSOL)-DIST
the mouth
Some languages have a system of possessive, or relational, classifiers, i.e., special elements that specify
the real-world relation that obtains between the
referents (Lichtenberk, 1983: 148) of the possessor
and possessee nominals, e.g., whether an object is
used for eating raw or cooked, as a plant, as a prey,
etc., as in Examples (5a)(5c). Such constructions
occur primarily in Oceania: among the Micronesian
languages, relational classifier systems sometimes involve more than 20 members (Lichtenberk, 1983;
Bickel and Nichols, 2005b). Normally only alienable
nominals require specification. The following construction is for Iaai (Austronesian, Oceanic: the
Loyalty Islands) (Lichtenberk, 1983: 159):
(5a) e
-k
koko
yam
my yam, for eating
CLASS-my
(5b) nuu
-k
koko
yam
my yam plant
CLASS-my
(5c) a i
-k
koko
yam
my yam, general sense
CLASS-my
breadGEN
knife.NOM
a/the knife bread
(6b) okro-s
be ed-i
gold-GEN ring-NOM
a/the golden ring
See also: Articles, Definite and Indefinite; Nominalization;
Nouns; Possession, External; Possession, Predicative.
Bibliography
Bickel B & Nichols J (2005a). Locus of marking in possessive noun phrases. In Dryer M, Haspelmath M, Comrie
B & Gil D (eds.) The world atlas of language structures.
Oxford: Oxford University Press. 102105.
Bickel B & Nichols J (2005b). Possessive classification. In
Dryer M, Haspelmath M, Comrie B & Gil D (eds.)
The world atlas of language structure. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. 242245.
Dryer M (1992). The Greenbergian word order correlations. Language 68(1), 81138.
Dryer M (2005). Order of genitive and noun. In Dryer M,
Haspelmath M, Comrie B & Gil D (eds.) The world atlas
of language structures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
350353.
Fraurud K (1990). Definiteness and the processing of noun
phrases in natural discourse. Journal of Semantics 7,
395433.
Greenberg J (1966). Some universals of grammar with
particular reference to the order of meaningful elements.
In Greenberg J (ed.) Universals of language. Cambridge,
MA: MIT. 73113.
Haiman J (1985). Natural syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Haspelmath M (1999). Explaining article-possessor complementarity: economic motivation in noun phrase syntax. Language 75(2), 227243.
Hawkins J A (1991). On (in)definite articles: implicatures
and (un)grammaticality prediction. Journal of Linguistics 27, 405442.
Heine B (1997). Possession. Cognitive sources, forces, and
grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Koptjevskaja-Tamm M (1996). Possessive NPs in Maltese:
alienability, iconicity and grammaticalization. In Borg A
& Plank F (eds.) The Maltese NP meets typology. Rivista
di linguistica 8.1. 245274.
Koptjevskaja-Tamm M (2002). Adnominal possession in
the European languages. Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung 55, 141172.
Koptjevskaja-Tamm M (2003a). Possessive noun phrases
in the languages of Europe. In Plank F (ed.) Noun phrase
structure in the languages of Europe. Berlin/New York:
Mouton de Gruyter. 621722.
Koptjevskaja-Tamm M (2003b). A woman of sin, a man of
duty and a hell of a mess: Non-determiner genitives in
Swedish. In Plank F (ed.) Noun phrase structure in the
languages of Europe. Berlin/New York: Mouton de
Gruyter. 515558.
Lyons C (1986). The syntax of English genitive constructions. Journal of Linguistics 22, 123143.
Plank F (ed.) (1995). Double case: agreement by suffixaufnahme. New York: Oxford University Press.
Pustejovsky J (1998). The generative lexicon. Cambridge,
MA/London: MIT Press.
Possession, Predicative
L Stassen, Radboud University, Nijmegen,
The Netherlands
2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
stable] and [ control]. In this case, the relation between the possessor (PR) and the possessed entity
(PD) can be said to hold for an unspecified (and
presumably quite extended) stretch of time. However,
the PR cannot, in general, be said to be in control of
the PD; that is, the PR has not the power or the
authority to decide on the whereabouts of the PD.
Languages vary as to which possessive relationships
they choose to encode as inalienable, but the core of
this subdomain seems to belong to kinship relations,
and part-whole relations, such as between a body and
its parts. Other relations often encountered
in inalienable possessive constructions are social relations (friend, leader, name), implements of material
culture (bow, pet, canoe, clothing), or agents and
objects of actions (see Seiler, 1983).
2. In alienable possession, the relation between possessor and possessed object must be characterized as
[ time stable] and [ control]. In this case, the PR is
in control of the PD, and the possessive relation is seen
as unspecified as to time length. Roughly speaking, this
is the domain of ownership in a narrow judicial or
ethical sense; it comprises those cases in which the possessive relation can be disrupted, transferred or given
up by acts of stealing, borrowing, selling or buying.
3. In temporary possession, the relation between
possessor and possessed object can be characterized
as [ time stable] and [ control]. Again, the PR is
in control of the PD in this case, but the possessive
relation is seen as short-term or accidental. This domain comprises relations that may be circumscribed
by phrases such as to have on ones person, to have at
ones disposal, or to carry with oneself. An English
example that strongly invites this temporary possessive reading would be something like Look out! Hes
got a knife!
Although there are languages like English, which
use, or can use, the same type of formal encoding for
all three subdomains, quite a few languages match
the semantic distinctions in the domain by different
formal encoding strategies. This fact has led several
Possession, External
V Gast, Free University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany
2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
h-kob
1.POSS-hand
Bibliography
Ko nig E (2001). Internal and external possessors. In
Haspelmath E, Ko nig E, Oesterreicher W & Raible W
(eds.) Language typology and language universals, vol. 2.
Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. 970978.
Payne D L & Barshi I (eds.) (1999). External possession.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Lyons C (1986). The syntax of English genitive constructions. Journal of Linguistics 22, 123143.
Plank F (ed.) (1995). Double case: agreement by suffixaufnahme. New York: Oxford University Press.
Pustejovsky J (1998). The generative lexicon. Cambridge,
MA/London: MIT Press.
Possession, Predicative
L Stassen, Radboud University, Nijmegen,
The Netherlands
2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
stable] and [ control]. In this case, the relation between the possessor (PR) and the possessed entity
(PD) can be said to hold for an unspecified (and
presumably quite extended) stretch of time. However,
the PR cannot, in general, be said to be in control of
the PD; that is, the PR has not the power or the
authority to decide on the whereabouts of the PD.
Languages vary as to which possessive relationships
they choose to encode as inalienable, but the core of
this subdomain seems to belong to kinship relations,
and part-whole relations, such as between a body and
its parts. Other relations often encountered
in inalienable possessive constructions are social relations (friend, leader, name), implements of material
culture (bow, pet, canoe, clothing), or agents and
objects of actions (see Seiler, 1983).
2. In alienable possession, the relation between possessor and possessed object must be characterized as
[ time stable] and [ control]. In this case, the PR is
in control of the PD, and the possessive relation is seen
as unspecified as to time length. Roughly speaking, this
is the domain of ownership in a narrow judicial or
ethical sense; it comprises those cases in which the possessive relation can be disrupted, transferred or given
up by acts of stealing, borrowing, selling or buying.
3. In temporary possession, the relation between
possessor and possessed object can be characterized
as [ time stable] and [ control]. Again, the PR is
in control of the PD in this case, but the possessive
relation is seen as short-term or accidental. This domain comprises relations that may be circumscribed
by phrases such as to have on ones person, to have at
ones disposal, or to carry with oneself. An English
example that strongly invites this temporary possessive reading would be something like Look out! Hes
got a knife!
Although there are languages like English, which
use, or can use, the same type of formal encoding for
all three subdomains, quite a few languages match
the semantic distinctions in the domain by different
formal encoding strategies. This fact has led several
laps
pencil
tuama si
wewean wale
rua
man
TOP
exist
house two
The man has two houses (Sneddon, 1975: 175)
AN.SING
Transitivization
A number of languages exhibit constructions that
cannot be classified straightforwardly in terms of
any of the basic types. Closer inspection reveals that
these cases can be rated as the results of several grammaticalization processes. The first of these processes
might be called transitivization or Have-drift, as
it consists in a process of drifting toward a Havepossessive from one of the other three basic types.
Cases of Have-drift from an erstwhile conjunctional
possessive commonly involve the cliticization or
incorporation of the conjunctional marker into the
existential predicate; the newly formed predicate then
acts as a transitive verb. An example (from Ganda,
a Northeast Bantu language) is:
(12) O
-li -na
ekitabo
2SING-be-with book
you have a book (Ashton et al., 1954: 234)
Adjectivalization
In some linguistic areas, we find possessive constructions in which the PD is constructed as the predicate
(or part of the predicate) and treated in the same way
as predicative adjectives are treated. Thus, depending
on whether predicative adjectives are nouny or
verby (Wetzer, 1996; Stassen, 1997), the possessed
NP shows up as (part of the) complement of the
copula, or as (the lexical core of) a predicative verb.
Examples include:
(16) From Tiwi (Australian, Tiwi):
awa mantani teraka
our
friend
wallaby
our friend has a wallaby (Osborne, 1974: 60)
(17) From Central Kanuri (Nilo-Saharan, Saharan):
Kam kura-te ku gena-nze-wa
(genyi)
man big -the money -his-ADJ/with (NEG.COP)
the big man has (no) money (Cyffer, 1974: 122)
References
Ashton E O et al. (1954). Luganda grammar. London:
Longmans, Green & Co.
Bendor-Samuel D (1972). Hierarchical structures in Guajajara. Norman, OK: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
Budina Lazdina T (1966). Teach yourself Latvian. London:
The English Universities Press.
Clark E V (1978). Locationals: existential. Locative and
possessive constructions. In Greenberg J, Ferguson C &
Possession, External
V Gast, Free University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany
2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
h-kob
1.POSS-hand
Bibliography
Konig E (2001). Internal and external possessors. In
Haspelmath E, Konig E, Oesterreicher W & Raible W
(eds.) Language typology and language universals, vol. 2.
Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. 970978.
Payne D L & Barshi I (eds.) (1999). External possession.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
modal opinions, they must still posit very many abstract objects; each total possible state of the world
should correspond to a possible world. But we appear
to accept that the abstract domain is immensely populous (we seem to believe in infinite collections of
numbers, for instance), and that fact may make us
jib less, perhaps irrationally, at the hefty ontologies
that abstractionists require as compared to equally
large concretist ontologies.
Abstractionists nonetheless have some work to do if
they are to make the ontological foundations of their
theories credible. Russells discovery that the guiding
principles of naive set theory are inconsistent showed
that one cannot be assured that there really are abstract items answering to every intuitively appealing
map of a portion of the abstract realm. Abstractionists therefore need to persuade us that the abstract
things with which they identify possible worlds exist.
To take a specific case, why should we believe in
the abstract states of affairs that Plantinga equates
with possible worlds? At the least, Plantinga should
present a strong case that the conception of states
of affairs that underlies his approach is consistent.
Similar remarks apply to the other abstractionists
mentioned earlier, Adams and Stalnaker.
As stated earlier in this article, Lewis argued that
abstractionist accounts of possible worlds cannot
provide nonmodal analyses of modal statements.
So what can abstractionists do with their putative
possible worlds? They can use them to supply truth
conditions for many modal claims, for one thing,
although those truth conditions may not be stated
nonmodally. (On Adamss theory, for instance, the
supplied truth conditions will speak of consistent
sets of propositions). And they can provide interpretations of those philosophical discussions, which,
rather than address the question of what possible
worlds are, instead take possible worlds for granted
and proceed to frame modal arguments and theses
by speaking of them. While those tasks may seem
trifling when compared to the more spectacular reductionist uses for possible worlds proposed by
Lewis, they should not be dismissed as noted at
the outset, the spread of possible worlds through
recent philosophy is, after all, owed to their use in
precisely those ways and not to a widespread conviction that the modal ultimately boils down to the
nonmodal.
An apparently simple method, described clearly
by Lewis at various points in his writings, has very
often guided philosophical investigations into the
nature of possible worlds: one lines up the various
contending accounts; one then compares their costs
and benefits; and one opts for the position that comes
out best overall. But although that methodology looks
Bibliography
Adams R M (1974). Theories of actuality. Nous 8,
211231. [Reprinted in Loux (1979).]
Divers J (2002). Possible worlds. London: Routledge.
Forbes G (1985). The metaphysics of modality. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Hughes G E & Cresswell M (1996). A new introduction to
modal logic. London: Routledge.
Kripke S (1980). Naming and necessity. Oxford: Blackwell.
Lewis D (1986). On the plurality of worlds. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Loux M J (ed.) (1979). The possible and the actual. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press.
Plantinga A (1974). The nature of necessity. Oxford:
Clarendon.
Prior A N & Fine K (1977). Worlds, times and selves.
London: Duckworth.
Rosen G (1990). Modal fictionalism. Mind 99, 327354.
Stalnaker R (1976). Possible worlds. Nous 10, 6575.
[Reprinted in Loux (1979).]
van Inwagen P (1986). Two concepts of possible worlds.
Midwest Studies in Philosophy 11, 185213.
with the propositions expressed by sentences in fiction (e.g., Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the
flowers herself), and about fiction (e.g., Othello
killed Desdemona), which had previously been
regarded as false or anomalous (see Dolezel, 1998:
2; Pavel, 1986: 11). The truth values of such sentences
can be determined not in relation to the actual world,
but in relation to the possible world projected by a
particular text, such as Virginia Woolfs Mrs. Dalloway or Shakespeares Othello. The adoption of a
possible-worlds approach within the semantics of fiction, therefore, better accounts for the intuitions
of ordinary readers, or, as Eco (1990: 64) puts it,
reconcile[s] common sense with the rights of alethic
logic. Since the late 1970s, some important work in
narratology and literary theory has resulted from
the application of the notion of possible worlds
to the study of literature and fiction (see Allen,
1989; Dolezel, 1998; Eco, 1979, 1990; Maitre,
1983; Martnez-Bonati, 1981; Pavel, 1986; Ronen,
1994; Ryan, 1991; Wolterstoff, 1980). After all, as
Dolezel (1998: ix) has pointed out, [l]iterary fiction
is probably the most active experimental laboratory
of the world-constructing enterprise.
The possible worlds of fiction, however, are quite
different from the possible worlds of logic. The latter
are usually defined as maximal, complete, and abstract sets of states of affairs, which are postulated
for the purposes of logical reasoning. In contrast, the
worlds of fiction have the following characteristics:
. They are projected by texts, and are therefore best
described as semiotic or cultural constructs (e.g.,
Dolezel, 1998: 2324; Eco, 1979: 220221;
Ronen, 1994: 48);
. They are furnished, i.e., they are inhabited by specific entities and individuals, who are involved in
specific events and states of affairs (e.g., Eco, 1990:
65; Ronen, 1994: 60);
. They are incomplete, i.e., they do not assign truth
values to every conceivable proposition (e.g., it is
not possible to determine the number of
Lady Macbeths children in Shakespeares play)
(e.g., Dolezel, 1998: 22; Wolterstoff, 1980: 131);
. They are parasitical in relation to the actual world:
unless otherwise indicated, we assume that what is
the case in the actual world also applies in fictional
worlds (i.e., we assume that Hamlet has two legs
even if this is not mentioned in Shakespeares play)
(e.g., Eco, 1990: 75; see also Ryans (1991: 48)
Principle of Minimal Departure and Telemans
(1989) Principle of Isomorphism);
. They can be semantically unhomogeneous, i.e.,
they may include different domains governed by
At the beginning of the story, there is a conflict between the actual domain (where the crow has the
cheese), and the foxs Wish world (where he has
the cheese). The fox therefore carries out a plan in
order to realize his Wish world. The plan involves the
expression of two pretended private worlds (see
Ryan, 1991: 118): a pretended Knowledge world in
which the crow is good-looking and can sing beautifully, and a pretended Wish world in which the crow
sings for the fox. The crow acts on the basis of the
validity of these pretended private worlds and
loses the cheese. The story therefore ends with the
realization of the foxs original Wish world.
This simple account of the plot of Aesops story
shows that it involves several private worlds which
are alternative possible states of the actual domain:
the two pretended private worlds outlined by the fox
and, implicitly, a mistaken Knowledge world formed
by the crow, in which the fox genuinely finds her
beautiful and longs to hear her voice. Ryan (1991:
148) suggests that the tellability of stories crucially
depends on the richness of the domain of the virtual
within narrative universes, i.e., on the presence of a
variety of unrealized possibilities, frustrated wishes,
and mistaken beliefs, which may form private virtual
narratives developed by the characters. This is captured by her Principle of Diversification, which states
that storytellers should try to achieve a high degree of
diversification among the possible worlds that form
the narrative universe (Ryan, 1991: 156; see also
Semino, 2003).
Bibliography
Alle n S (ed.) (1989). Possible Worlds in Humanities, Arts
and Sciences: Proceedings of Nobel Symposium 65.
New York and Berlin: de Gruyter.
Ashline W L (1995). The problem of impossible fictions.
Style 29, 215234.
Bradley R & Swartz N (1979). Possible Worlds: An Introduction to Logic and its Philosophy. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Divers J (2002). Possible Worlds. London: Routledge.
Dolez el L (1976). Narrative modalities. Journal of
Literary Semantics 5, 514.
Dolez el L (1980). Truth and authenticity in narrative.
Poetics Today 1, 725.
Dolez el L (1995). Fictional worlds: Density, gaps, and
inference. Style 29, 201214.
Dolez el L (1998). Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible
Worlds. Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins
University Press.
Eco U (1979). The Role of the Reader. London: Hutchinson.
Eco U (1990). The Limits of Interpretation. Bloomington
and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press.
Hidalgo-Downing L (2002). Creating things that are
not: The role of negation in the poetry of Wislawa
Szymborska. Journal of Literary Semantics 31, 113132.
Kripke S (1971). Semantical considerations on modal
logic. In Linsky L (ed.) Reference and Modality. Oxford:
Clarendon Press. 6372.
Lewis D (1986). On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Maitre D (1983). Literature and Possible Worlds. London:
Middlesex Polytechnic Press.
Martnez-Bonati F (1981). Fictive Discourse and the Structures of Literature. Ithaca, NY, and London, UK: Cornell
University Press.
Meneses P (1991). Poetic worlds: Martin Codax. Style 25,
291309.
Oltean S (2003). On the bivocal nature of free indirect
discourse. Journal of Literary Semantics 32, 167176.
Pavel T G (1986). Fictional Worlds. Cambridge, MA and
London, UK: Harvard University Press.
Ronen R (1994). Possible Worlds in Literary Theory.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ronen R (1995). Philosophical realism and postmodern
antirealism. Style 29, 84200.
Ryan M-L (1991). Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence
and Narrative Theory. Bloomington and Indianapolis,
IN: Indiana University Press.
Ryan M-L (1995a). Introduction: From possible worlds to
virtual reality. Style 29, 173183.
Ryan M-L (1995b). Allegories of immersion: Virtual
narration in postmodern fiction. Style 29, 262286.
Semino E (1997). Language and World Creation in Poems
and Other Texts. London: Longman.
Semino E (2003). Discourse worlds and mental spaces. In
Gavins J & Steen G (eds.) Cognitive Poetics in Practice.
London: Routledge. 8398.
Semino E, Short M & Wynne M (1999). Hypothetical
words and thoughts in contemporary British narratives.
Narrative 7, 307334.
Teleman U (1989). The world of words and pictures. In
Alle n S (ed.) Possible Worlds in Humanities, Arts and
Sciences: Proceedings of Nobel Symposium 65.
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Wolterstoff N (1980). Works and Worlds of Art. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Post-Bloomfieldians 783
Post-Bloomfieldians
J P Blevins, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Leonard Bloomfield is widely regarded as the principal architect of American descriptivism (or structuralism, as it tends to be called by its detractors), yet
many of the positions associated with the descriptivist
or Bloomfieldian tradition originate with Bloomfields successors. Indeed, the great achievement of
the post-Bloomfieldians was to develop the often
programmatic remarks in Bloomfields work into a
coherent framework of grammatical analysis. To the
extent that the key analytical assumptions of this
framework survive in generative approaches and
their offshoots, contemporary formal approaches
fall squarely within the post-Bloomfieldian tradition.
For the sake of this survey, it is nevertheless useful to
restrict attention to the group of Bloomfields immediate successors; they include Bernard Bloch, Zellig
Harris, Archibald Hill, Charles Hockett, Eugene
Nida, Kenneth Pike, Henry Smith, George Trager,
and Rulon Wells.
The post-Bloomfieldians established the now-familiar practice of factoring linguistic descriptions
into a series of levels in which simple units at one
level are made up of combinations of units from the
next level down. This Russian doll organization, in
which clauses are composed of phrases, phrases of
words, words of morphemes, and morphemes of phonemes, departs significantly from the conception outlined in Bloomfield 1933. Bloomfield had interpreted
the relation between a meaning-bearing morpheme
and its constituent non-meaning-bearing phonemes
as a model for the organization of linguistic signs
in general. Hence tagmemes, meaning-bearing units
at the syntactic level, were composed of non-meaning-bearing taxemes, not of smaller meaning-bearing
units, such as morphemes. It was the post-Bloomfieldians who replaced Bloomfields fractal conception
with a model in which a linguistic analysis projected
uniform part-whole relations from morpheme to
utterance, in the terms of Harris (1946).
The post-Bloomfieldians applied this general constituency-based conception first to the analysis of
word structure and then to phrase and clause structure. In the domain of morphology, techniques of
part-whole analysis evolved into what Hockett
(1954) termed the item and arrangement (IA)
model. The basic principles of segmentation and classification that defined this model were set out in
Harris (1942) and refined in Hockett (1947). By
the early 1950s Hockett was no longer satisfied by
784 Post-Bloomfieldians
Bibliography
Chomsky N (1956). Three models for the description of
language. Institute of Radio Engineers transactions on
information theory 2(2), 113124.
Chomsky N (1957). Syntactic structures. The Hague:
Mouton.
Harris Z S (1942). Morpheme alternants in linguistic analysis. Language 18, 169180 [Reprinted in Joos, 1957,
109115.].
Harris Z S (1946). From morpheme to utterance. Language 22, 161183 [Reprinted in Joos, 1957, 142153.].
Harris Z S (1957). Co-occurrence and transformation in
linguistic structure. Language 33, 283340 [Reprinted
in Joos, 1957, 109115.].
Hockett C F (1947). Problems of morphemic analysis.
Language 23, 321343 [Reprinted in Joos, 1957,
229242.].
Hockett C F (1954). Two models of grammatical description. Word 10, 210231 [Reprinted in Joos, 1957,
386399.].
Hockett C F (1967). The Yawelmani basic verb. Language
43, 208222.
Joos M (ed.) (1957). Readings in linguistics I. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Matthews P H (1993). Grammatical theory in the United
States from Bloomfield to Chomsky. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
784 Post-Bloomfieldians
Bibliography
Chomsky N (1956). Three models for the description of
language. Institute of Radio Engineers transactions on
information theory 2(2), 113124.
Chomsky N (1957). Syntactic structures. The Hague:
Mouton.
Harris Z S (1942). Morpheme alternants in linguistic analysis. Language 18, 169180 [Reprinted in Joos, 1957,
109115.].
Harris Z S (1946). From morpheme to utterance. Language 22, 161183 [Reprinted in Joos, 1957, 142153.].
Harris Z S (1957). Co-occurrence and transformation in
linguistic structure. Language 33, 283340 [Reprinted
in Joos, 1957, 109115.].
Hockett C F (1947). Problems of morphemic analysis.
Language 23, 321343 [Reprinted in Joos, 1957,
229242.].
Hockett C F (1954). Two models of grammatical description. Word 10, 210231 [Reprinted in Joos, 1957,
386399.].
Hockett C F (1967). The Yawelmani basic verb. Language
43, 208222.
Joos M (ed.) (1957). Readings in linguistics I. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Matthews P H (1993). Grammatical theory in the United
States from Bloomfield to Chomsky. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Postmodernism 785
Bibliography
Bouwsma W J (1957). Concordia Mundi. The career and
thought of Guillaume Postel (15101581). Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Kuntz M L (1981). Guillaume Postel, prophet of the
restitution of all things: his life and thought. Archives
internationales dhistoire des ide es 98. The Hague:
Nijhoff.
Matton S (ed.) (2001). Documents oublies sur lalchimie, la
kabbale et Guillaume Postel: offerts, a` loccasion de son
90e anniversaire, a` Francois Secret par ses ele`ves et amis.
Travaux dhumanisme et Renaissance 353. Gene`ve:
Droz.
Postel G (1538a). Linguarum duodecim characteribus
differentium alphabetum. Paris: Dionysius Lescuier.
Postel G (1538b). De Originibus seu de Hebraicae linguae
et gentis antiquitate, deque variarum linguarum affinitate. Paris: Dionysius Lescuier.
Postel G (1540?). Grammatica Arabica. Paris: Petrus
Gromorsus.
Postel C (1992). Les ecrits de Guillaume Postel: publies en
France et leurs editeurs 15381579. Travaux dhumanisme et renaissance 265. Gene`ve: Droz.
Secret F (1962). Guillaume Postel et les e tudes arabes a` la
renaissance. Arabica 9, 2136.
Postmodernism
T F Broden, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA
2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction
The epithet postmodern was used with increasing
frequency in the 1960s1990s to describe postwar
affluent societies and their cultural productions. The
term has been used to designate both the extenuation
of modernism and a novel impulse reacting against
modernism, both a sociohistorical period and an esthetic trend. Postmodern conveys now stylistic tendencies, now arts relation to society; now pejorative,
now meliorative assessments; now English-language
cultural productions, now those of different idioms
and many continents.
As of the early 1960s, new trends in American
fiction dubbed postmodern by writers and critics challenged realist and modernist precepts. In literature,
postmodernism manifests itself in writing that flaunts
its artifice as language and text, in vibrant confrontations of elite and mass cultural forms, and in new
styles that combine innovative techniques with critical realism (John Barth, Donald Barthelme, Robert
Coover, Thomas Pynchon). Postmodern novels
Postmodernism 785
Bibliography
Bouwsma W J (1957). Concordia Mundi. The career and
thought of Guillaume Postel (15101581). Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Kuntz M L (1981). Guillaume Postel, prophet of the
restitution of all things: his life and thought. Archives
internationales dhistoire des idees 98. The Hague:
Nijhoff.
Matton S (ed.) (2001). Documents oublies sur lalchimie, la
kabbale et Guillaume Postel: offerts, a` loccasion de son
90e anniversaire, a` Francois Secret par ses ele`ves et amis.
Travaux dhumanisme et Renaissance 353. Gene`ve:
Droz.
Postel G (1538a). Linguarum duodecim characteribus
differentium alphabetum. Paris: Dionysius Lescuier.
Postel G (1538b). De Originibus seu de Hebraicae linguae
et gentis antiquitate, deque variarum linguarum affinitate. Paris: Dionysius Lescuier.
Postel G (1540?). Grammatica Arabica. Paris: Petrus
Gromorsus.
Postel C (1992). Les ecrits de Guillaume Postel: publies en
France et leurs editeurs 15381579. Travaux dhumanisme et renaissance 265. Gene`ve: Droz.
Secret F (1962). Guillaume Postel et les etudes arabes a` la
renaissance. Arabica 9, 2136.
Postmodernism
T F Broden, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA
2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction
The epithet postmodern was used with increasing
frequency in the 1960s1990s to describe postwar
affluent societies and their cultural productions. The
term has been used to designate both the extenuation
of modernism and a novel impulse reacting against
modernism, both a sociohistorical period and an esthetic trend. Postmodern conveys now stylistic tendencies, now arts relation to society; now pejorative,
now meliorative assessments; now English-language
cultural productions, now those of different idioms
and many continents.
As of the early 1960s, new trends in American
fiction dubbed postmodern by writers and critics challenged realist and modernist precepts. In literature,
postmodernism manifests itself in writing that flaunts
its artifice as language and text, in vibrant confrontations of elite and mass cultural forms, and in new
styles that combine innovative techniques with critical realism (John Barth, Donald Barthelme, Robert
Coover, Thomas Pynchon). Postmodern novels
786 Postmodernism
Fiction
In the first half of the 1960s, a number of experimental
novels by new authors such as John Barth, Donald
Barthelme, Joseph Heller, Thomas Pynchon, Robert
Coover, and then little-known Vladimir Nabokov,
introduced a new kind fiction in the United States, a
peculiar blend of dark humor, literary parody, surrealism, byzantine plots full of improbable coincidences
and outrageous action, all presented in a dazzling
variety of excessive styles that constantly called attention to themselves. Postmodern fiction had arrived
(McCaffery, 1986: xix). The writers deliberately distanced themselves from their well-known realist
elders Philip Roth, William Styron, and John Updike,
as they did from earlier masters of mimesis such as
Postmodernism 787
788 Postmodernism
Architecture
Architecture has figured prominently in postmodernism debates: postmodern structures present clear
stylistic contrasts with modern constructions, while
through its practical functions, architecture poses
issues in cultural politics central to postmodern
debates. Modern architecture defined itself as part
of the artistic avant-garde in the 1920s1930s; in
keeping with modernism in painting, sculpture, and
music, it passionately asserted its formalist and experimental character and proudly attuned its forms to
the esthetics of fellow initiates. Henri Le Corbusier,
Bauhaus, Walter Gropius, and the International Style
rejected traditional styles inherited from the past,
especially their tell-tale historical or regional decorative elements, and asserted bold new structures based
on universal geometric components, including square
and cube, cylinder and pyramid, in harmony with
the cubists and abstractionists in painting (Georges
Braque, Pablo Picasso, Fernand Le ger, Piet Mondrian).
In music, as of the 1920s, Austrian composer Arnold
Scho nberg relied on formal and universal principles in
developing a method founded on purely mathematical
rules for combining a series of 12 tones, producing
novel atonal sequences and chords radically different
from established western major and minor keys, their
traditional harmonies and scales, and from conventional genres and compositional principles (cf. Alban
Berg, Anton Webern, Pierre Boulez). At the same time,
achieving economic efficiencies of design and construction, modern architectures simplified forms
also advanced its progressive social agenda by helping
to provide affordable lodging for the new urbanites
generated by modernization. Yet by the 1950s, modernist architecture in the United States had exhausted
both its innovative spirit and its social idealism, and
had become the chic establishment look of power and
success. Throughout the West, its progressive urban
planning had unwittingly produced the social sterility of uniform, ghettoized high-rise modernism, recognized as an international failure (e.g., Pruitt-Igoe in
St. Louis, Sarcelles north of Paris).
The architect Robert Venturi cogently articulated
imaginative alternatives to doctrinaire modernism in
his pioneering book Contradiction and complexity in
architecture (1966), and in designs that juxtaposed
modernism, styles native to the site, and familiar
classical or other historical features. He advances key
postmodernist features over consecrated modernist
traits: I like elements which are hybrid rather than
pure. . . vestigial as well as innovating . . . Im for
Postmodernism 789
Art
The art and art criticism of the postmodern period
react to regnant classical modernism and its canonical
formulation by critics such as Clement Greenberg.
For the latter, modern art must be formalist, selfreferential, and medium-specific, and should privilege
media such as painting and sculpture that highlight
the artists individual style, avoiding new technologies
and modes of mechanical reproduction. In the middle
of the last century, Greenberg, Theodor Adorno,
Georg Luka cs, and Jose Ortega y Gasset fought strenuously to free art from the tentacles of commercialism and totalitarian politics (Hopkins, 2000: 2530;
Huyssen, 1986: 197).
790 Postmodernism
was virtue; 20042005 Chicago MCA Stalemate exhibit). Postmodern heterogeneity and appropriation
become particularly effective when they mobilize the
cultural and historical specificity of components
forming the subjects identity. Jimmie Durhams
1985 installation Bedias stirring wheel thus combines
Western Plains Indian iconography (e.g., beaded belts,
animal skull) with generic North American cultural
realia (automobile steering wheel, hub, and hubcap)
to portray his Native American identity today as a
bricolage of the traditional and the contemporary,
of minority and dominant cultures (Hopkins, 2000:
221222, Fig. 115; cf. Achille Bonito Olivias transavantgarde, Appignanesi, 1989: 111113). Durhams
accompanying text wryly critiques Western studies of
primitive peoples and the modern, imperialist drive
to dominate and construct its Other as an authentic
folkloric essence.
While each art form exploits specific resources and
variously draws from and reacts against its own predecessors, postmodern cultural productions in the
three fields studied assert multiplicity over unity and
affirm particular historical, ethnic, gendered, and regional forms over abstract universals. They problematize modernisms sharp divide between high and
low culture and realisms notion of mimesis, while
mobilizing art to criticize society and to explore individual identity. Postmodern art and architecture have
both attracted charges of commercialism: British
Conceptualist photographers and critics Victor Burgin
and Mary Kelly thus censure the erotic postmodern
billboard-style paintings and vacuum cleaner installations of Jeff Koons as uncritical commercialism
(M. Newman in Appignanesi,1989: 120122; Hopkins,
2000: 224, Fig. 117).
Postmodern Critique
Four figures played a key role in giving a new impetus and focus to postmodernism in the 1980s: the
French cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard, the French
poststructuralist philosopher Jean-Franc ois Lyotard,
the second-generation Frankfurt School philosopher
Ju rgen Habermas in Germany, and the American
Marxist literary and cultural critic Fredric Jameson.
Their interventions and critical exchanges greatly
advanced the debate in the realms of philosophy
and social and political theory, eliciting important
developments and responses from figures such as
philosopher Gianni Vattimo, sociologist Zygmunt
Bauman, cultural theorist Paul Virilio, political theorists Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau, geographer Edward Soja, and philosopher of education
Henry Giroux. Together with poststructuralism as
developed by Roland Barthes, He le`ne Cixous, Gilles
Postmodernism 791
In articles and monographs inaugurated by The postmodern condition published in 1979 and translated
into English in 1984, Jean-Franc ois Lyotard wades
into the postmodern controversy as an idiosyncratic
poststructuralist. While his 1979 essay accepts the human sciences linguistic turn, it steers away from
(post)structuralist models focused on the immanent
analysis of language (sign, signifier), and draws instead from two other traditions, narrative semiotics
and, most especially, pragmatics, particularly as formulated by Ludwig Wittgenstein in Philosophical
investigations (19461949). Rather than postulating
signifieds, concepts, or referents, Wittgenstein and
his followers define language directly through action
and social context and work out their own arguments in a clear expository prose. Crucially, rooted in
everyday work and leisure, sociability and care of the
self, Wittgensteins language games appear and disappear throughout history, vary according to milieu
and individual experience, are changing and non-denumerable, and possess family resemblance but
no essence. Lyotard considers Wittgensteins philosophical pragmatics ground-breaking and decisive;
anti-foundationalist, historicized, and decentralizing,
this pragmatics combines with narratology to provide
Lyotard with an accessible version of poststructuralism with a set toward social theory. His essay accentuates the socio-political stakes that Foucault
highlights, but that had tended to remain undercurrents in deconstruction before 1980.
The postmodern condition endeavors to define the
changed status of knowledge, science, and education
in post-1960s Western societies. Lyotard sees the
post-industrial age marked by disbelief in grand narratives, or transcendent metaphysical and political
systems, including the twin philosophies that fashioned education in the modern era, the Enlightenment
project of democratic emancipation that inspired the
development of public elementary schools throughout
the West in the 19th and 20th centuries, and German
idealisms dedication to knowledge and higher learning for their own sake, which engendered great universities during the same period (1979 [1984: 3137]).
Absent such overarching frameworks, Lyotard observes
two sets of little narratives or multifarious local,
792 Postmodernism
Postmodernism 793
in the 1990s, Jameson develops his theoretical proposals in detailed analyses of buildings, films, and
fiction, including contrastive descriptions of modern
and postmodern cultural productions (e.g., Vincent
Van Goghs A pair of boots versus Andy Warhols
Diamond dust shoes, 1991: 610). His ambivalence
toward postmodern cultural productions emerges in
his studies of two postmodern structures, the central
lobby of the 1977 Los Angeles Westin Bonaventure
hotel, and the Santa Monica, California home architect Frank Gehry rebuilt for his family in 1979. The
first is described as a fragmented, bewildering, and
manipulative space that exceeds the capacity of the
individual body to locate itself or to process its lifeworld perceptually and cognitively an allegory of
the subjects inability to map the new global, virtual
electronic network in which it finds itself (3845). Yet
the second is depicted as a critique of late-capitalist
society, and as a new spatial language that may allow
its inhabitants to be comfortable in a historically original way, potentially designing a utopian mode of
human interaction (107129).
Turning postmodern suspicion and irony on itself,
Jameson analyzes the stylistic, philosophical, and social characteristics widely attributed to postmodernism as indexes of problems, clues to manipulation,
and symptoms of societal ills. The decentered and
fragmented postmodern life-world points to the
need to reconnect atomized groups the logic of
capitalism is dispersive and disjunctive in the first
place (1991: 100), as uncertainty, indeterminacy, and
ambiguity should prompt a demand for critical clarity
that could enable subjects to recover greater agency
and resistance (xi). Playfulness without purpose, signifiers without signifieds, and surface dynamics without depth all attest to severed vital relations that
must be restored to regain access to meaning and
emotional intensity. The substitution of pastiche for
individual artistic style reveals the undermining of
the individual and the cultural unconscious, as fashion-plate faux-nostalgia in film and video betrays a
lost sense of history. In methodology as in social philosophy, the cultural critic needs connections and
solidarities, not pure differences and deconstruction:
it is diagnostically more productive to have a totalizing concept than to try to make ones way without
one (212). While he regretfully accepts that in the
esthetic realm, the modernist avant-garde and its
enriching strategy of defamiliarization are dead,
Jamesons perspectives on postmodernism depend
crucially on modernist attitudes and analytical concepts. His theoretical formulations and critical studies exerted great influence on English-language
postmodern studies.
Conclusion
In all its phases and arenas, postmodernism has
attracted fierce critics, who accuse it of irrationalism
and nihilism, of gratuitous eclecticism and selfindulgent superficiality. Yet postmodernism transformed artistic expressions in literature and film, art
and architecture, challenging certitudes inherited
from modernism and realism. The postmodernism
debates grapple with the relation of art to society
and the potential political import of art, criticism,
and theory; they highlight the diversity of Western
societies and challenge them to open themselves
wider to minorities and women. Skeptical of claims
to universality and of the desire for homogeneity or
oneness, postmodernists privilege the particularism
of the local and the historical, and assert difference,
especially as inflected by gender, race, and class. In
particular, knowledge is asserted to be specific to
cultural norms, social forces, and individual subject
positions and interests. Postmodernists affirm the
conventional and constructed character of representation, and demystify social and esthetic discourses
claiming a natural, permanent status, from filmic and
fictional realism to positivist history and anthropology. They draw attention to the role of language and
visual codes, whose temporality, rhetoric, and signifiers displace the ideals of pure concepts, referents,
and personal experience. Postmodern theory thus
appears as a skeptical, anti-humanist, and antifoundationalist discourse, which critiques ideas, beliefs,
and institutions central to modern Western civilization, from mimesis to the nation-state, from faith in
reason to belief in progress, from the autonomy of the
individual to the transcendence of universal values,
from the free-market economy to socialist state capitalism (cf. Paul Maltby in Taylor and Winquist, 2001:
302303). In various respects, postmodernism finds
itself at loggerheads with Platonic idealism and Cartesian rationalism; with empiricists, Enlightenment
philosophers, and their positivist descendants; and with
the conservative humanism of a Matthew Arnold.
See also: Barthes, Roland (19151980); Foucault, Michel
(19261984); Lacan, Jacques (19011981); Poststructuralism and Deconstruction; Pragmatics: Overview; Pragmatics and Semantics; Structuralism; Wittgenstein, Ludwig
Josef Johann (18891951).
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794 Postmodernism
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NC: Duke University Press.
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1987.]
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Blackwell.
Hassan I (1982). The dismemberment of Orpheus. Toward
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Hekman S (1990). Gender and knowledge: elements of a
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Press.
Hopkins D (2000). After modern art 19452000. Oxford:
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Hutcheon L (1988). The poetics of postmodernism: history,
theory, fiction. New York: Routledge.
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frameworks for developing knowledge and the criteria for evaluating truth claims necessarily arise
together with the elaboration of particular structures
of power and authority, and that as a result, Truth is
linked in a circular relation with systems of power
which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power
which it induces and which extend it (1984: 74).
Poststructuralists extend existentialists interest in
the human body, studying it as a site of signification
and affect, resistance and identity construction. In
the first section of her Revolution in poetic language,
Kristeva highlights and develops the early, preOedipal stages in which the infant is still psychologically one with the mother. Her analysis argues that
this semiotic period characterized by visual images
and bodily rhythms represents a crucial experience
for the child, and that its influence extends through
the later stages of development in which the individual enters into the symbolic realm of language,
law, and patriarchy (in Leitch, 2001: 21652179).
Although Cixous explicitly defines e criture fe minine
womans writing through gender and not sexual
categories, she describes the process as one in which
those zones of the womans body that are suppressed
and inhibited in society are freed to express themselves (in Leitch, 2001: 20352056). Susan Bordo
emphasizes the role of advertising and the mass
media in elaborating and popularizing the feminine
ideal of the thin body, jeopardizing health and
damaging self-esteem, fostering pathologies of
bulimia and anorexia (in Leitch, 2001: 23602376).
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with a thesis (still deeply rooted in old-fashioned philosophical grammar) about the relations expressed by
prepositions. After that he took up Indo-European
studies with Franz Bopp in Berlin and became a lecturer there in 1830. He was appointed extraordinary
professor of general linguistics in Halle in 1833 and
promoted to full professor in 1838. He was loyal to the
University of Halle until his death on July 5, 1887.
with a thesis (still deeply rooted in old-fashioned philosophical grammar) about the relations expressed by
prepositions. After that he took up Indo-European
studies with Franz Bopp in Berlin and became a lecturer there in 1830. He was appointed extraordinary
professor of general linguistics in Halle in 1833 and
promoted to full professor in 1838. He was loyal to the
University of Halle until his death on July 5, 1887.
His first major work, the two volumes of Etymologische Forschungen auf dem Gebiete der IndoGermanischen Sprachen (18331836) is concerned
with comparing the lexical stock of the Indo-European
languages and, at the same time, observing the regular
phonological correspondences among them. By this
two-track approach he put etymology on a firm methodological basis and also founded the comparative
historical phonology of the Indo-European languages.
But while Pott was still alive, the subsequent development of Indo-European studies went far beyond the
foundations laid by him specifically with regard to
phonology, owing mainly to the progress made possible
by the principles of the Neogrammarians postulating
that sound laws operate without exceptions.
Quite early, and presumably under the influence of
Wilhelm von Humboldt in this approach, Pott tried to
familiarize himself with all the worldwide languages
and language families for which he could obtain
printed materials. Thus he abandoned the restriction
on Indo-European languages and, being far ahead of
his time, turned to truly universal linguistic studies.
These studies enabled him to arrive at an overall
(mainly bibliographical) survey of general linguistics
that was published in the serial Einleitung in die allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (18841890) and in the
summarily Zur Litteratur der Sprachenkunde Europas
(1887), both of which were reprinted together in Pott
(1974).
Moreover, Pott did pioneering work on the gypsies
and their Romany (Romani) language, and by his Die
Zigeuner in Europa und Asien (2 vols.) (18441845),
he created a firm scholarly basis for such studies. He
had also developed a penchant for studying modern
languages such as Kurdish, Latvian, and even the
Bantu languages, whose relationship he reliably documented. Pott followed Humboldts approach toward
linguistic research without linguistic boundaries by
dealing with particular grammatical categories, with
phenomena such as reduplication and gemination,
with proper names in general, or with numerals
and especially the quinary and vigesimal systems of
counting (1868). Furthermore, he published a new
annotated edition of Humboldts Ueber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues, with an
Bibliography
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Introduction
Pragmatics is concerned with meaning in the context
of language use. Basically, when we communicate
through language we often mean more than we say;
there is often a gap between speaker meaning and
sentence meaning. For example, why is it that we
interpret Can you pass the salt? as a request and not
simply a question? Why do we tend to interpret John
Bibliography
Poutsma H (1893). Do you speak English? Amsterdam:
Stemler.
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English. Groningen: Noordhoff.
Stuurman F (1993). English masters and their era.
Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Introduction
Pragmatics is concerned with meaning in the context
of language use. Basically, when we communicate
through language we often mean more than we say;
there is often a gap between speaker meaning and
sentence meaning. For example, why is it that we
interpret Can you pass the salt? as a request and not
simply a question? Why do we tend to interpret John
above, this power condition is institutionalized within the system of parental control, within the legal
system for traffic law, and within the formal authority
of army hierarchy. Thus, although we can all produce
orders, we do not all have access to formal roles that
ensure the order is carried out. Hence, in contexts
such as schools, medical encounters, or certain
forms of business organizations, the power to utilize
selected pragmatic resources is differentially
distributed (Drew and Heritage, 1992; Bourdieu,
1991; Lippi-Green, 1997) (see Institutional Talk).
This type of control may be seen in the organization of talk in interaction. Here, there are issues of not
only who can say what, but who can speak when and
about what topic. Studies of the distribution and
organization of taking turns at talk clearly show
that in schools it is the teacher who organizes and
distributes the turns at talk (Coulthard, 1977). Similarly, in the doctors surgery, it is the doctor who is in
control; it is his job to ask the questions and the
patients job is simply to respond (Wodak, 1996). In
these contexts, there is an interactional asymmetry
in relation to responsibility for talk organization.
Indeed, in the case of either the school or the surgery,
for the student or the patient to begin to ask questions
or to take the lead in talking would be seen as a
challenge to the power and control of the doctor or
teacher.
But it need not be a specifically formal situation
where such forms of control operate. Studies of gender differences have continually indicated that in
mixed-gender interactions, men attempt to dominate
the control of turns, access to the floor, and topic
content and distribution (Talbot, 1998; Tannen,
1994). As Shaw (2000) has shown, things become
even more complicated when gender and formal context are mixed. In a study of what may be termed
illegal interruptions in British House of Commons
Proceedings, Shaw noted how male MPs made such
interruptions more frequently than female MPs. Furthermore, when women MPs did carry out such
actions, they were more frequently censured for this
by the Speaker of the House.
There is also a more general interpretation here, simply that this restaurant is where good people go for
their food. Since most of us wish to think of ourselves
as good, then this restaurant is the place to be. Both
assumptions would be worked out using a similar
approach. In both cases, the message is clear: if you
consider yourself good in either (or even more) of
the interpretations provided, then you should be in
restaurant X.
This kind of influential power attempts to control
our actions by pushing our choices in a particular
direction. Since good may be taken in a number of
ways, it expands the range of audiences that it might
influence. Thus, any ambiguity is utilized for a positive
purpose, as is the case with the politician before an
election who says We have no intention and see no
reason at this time to raise taxes. In this case there are
two elements worthy of attention. The first is the negation of the term intention. If intention means one is
going to do X (raise taxes), then this is denied. However, in the second part of the sentence the adverbial at
this time marks any intention as time- and contextbased. Consequently, if at a later time one does raise
taxes (after being elected for example), one could not
be accused of having previously misled the public.
Such time-controlled modifications are frequent in
the political domain. The British Prime Minister
stated, in relation to Britains involvement in the
Iraq conflict in 2004, that At the present time, we
believe, we have sufficient troops (in Iraq). We see
the use of the adverbial again, but also in this case
the use of an epistemic marker of knowledge, i.e.,
believe as opposed to know (see Chafe and Nichols,
1986). Believe is weaker than know and may be used
to hedge any claims. Should future events prove
against ones statement, one can always say that is
what I believed at the time.
Pragmatics, as may be seen, is central to the operation of power in society. In formalized contexts, it
explains acts in terms of their conditions of operation;
similarly, it explains in such contexts, and others,
who is expected talk when and about what. It also
allows us to see how embedded inferential information may be calculated to explain specific messages
and similar embedded information may be used to
sidetrack us or to protect the speaker. Knowledge of
pragmatics is therefore central to understanding
power and its role in human communication.
See also: Critical Applied Linguistics; Grice, Herbert Paul
Bibliography
Austin J L (1962). How to do things with words. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Bach K & Harnish R M (1979). Linguistic communication
and speech acts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Bell A (1991). Language of the news media. Oxford: Blackwell.
Blakemore D (1992). Understanding utterances. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Bourdieu P (1991). Language and symbolic power.
Thompson J B (ed.) (Raymond G & Adamson M trans).
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Chafe W & Nichols J (eds.) (1986). Evidentiality: The
linguistic coding of epistemology. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Coulthard M (1977). Discourse analysis. London:
Longman.
Davis S (1991). Pragmatics: A reader. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Drew P & Heritage J (1992). Talk at work: Interaction in
institutional settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Fairclough N (2001). Language and power. London: Longman.
Foucault M (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings. Gordon C (ed.). Brighton:
Harvester.
Gazdar G (1979). Pragmatics: Implicature, presupposition,
and logical form. New York: Academic Press.
Pragmatic Acts 5
Pragmatic Acts
J L Mey, University of Southern Denmark,
Odense, Denmark
2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
A Philosophers Mistake
An often heard critique of the Searlean approach
to speech act theory (and, by implication, also of
Austins and Grices; see Mey, 2001: 9394) is that
it concentrates on speech to the exclusion of other
phenomena (e.g., writing) that also fall into the category of language. As a result of this critique, some
linguists have suggested that we replace the term
speech act by a more general one, such as act of
language (compare also the French distinction between acte langagier and acte de parole; German has
Sprachhandlung as opposed to Sprechakt; Bu hler,
1934) (see Speech Acts; Grice, Herbert Paul (1913
1988); Austin, John Langshaw (19111960)).
What is at stake here is more than a terminological
quibble. Those who want to consider speech as different, less comprehensive than language overlook
the fact that all language originates in speech; writing
is a later development, arising from the need to preserve the spoken word for later and remote use. However, there is a wider implication, one that is equally
often overlooked by linguists and many philosophers
alike. As Searle (1969: 16) remarked,
When I take a noise or a mark on a piece of paper to be
an instance of linguistic communication, as a message,
one of the things I must assume is that the noise or mark
was produced by a being or beings more or less like
myself and produced with certain kinds of intentions.
6 Pragmatic Acts
Pragmatic Acts 7
underlying presuppositions making the scene possible. This possibility involves what the actors can
afford, not just what they can think and cognize.
Thus, the common scene is transcendental in an
even deeper sense than Kants: Not only the possibility of thinking and cognizing but also the very
possibility of acting is questioned. This is why
Rancie`res notion of common scene is so important
for the theory of pragmatic acts (see Kant, Immanuel
(17241804); Pragmatic Presupposition).
Understanding a scene depends entirely on the acting. An active understanding implies having an idea
of what to do on the scene, not just of what to say or
think (these latter, although important, are still subordinated to the acting). Conversely, ones understanding of others depends on understanding their
acting and the role they assume on the scene. What
may appear as crazy behavior outside of the theater
(cf. the expressions, a theatrical laugh, to assume a
tragic posture, or even to put on an act) is perfectly
understandable and rational on the scene, where role
and rationality depend on each other. Rational acting
is to act in accordance with ones role; any acting
outside of that role is irrational (besides being strictly
speaking impossible if one wants to keep ones place,
both as an actor on the scene and as a member of
the theatrical company).
Pragmatics tries to place the common scene within
society by making it clear that also on the societal
scene at large (and not just in politics) a battle for
domination is going on. If we do not understand this
battle as a struggle between the forces of society, our
understanding of the common scene and its actors
will be incomplete. Conversely, our acting is determined by the scene: The scenes affordances (a term
from psychology; Gibson, 1979) are the limits of our
actions. Common affordances create a common platform for action; a lack of such affordances restricts
our possibilities of acting socially. Inasmuch as our
acting depends on our understanding of the scene and
its affordances, the scene is only actable for all
actors if it has been established as common that is,
affordable for everybody and by everybody.
From the previous discussion, it is clear that not
only the scene determines our acting but also, conversely, our actions determine and reaffirm the existing scene. We profess adherence to our common
platform by acting within its confines, by obeying
its limitations, and by realizing our possibilities.
Our acting on the scene (this includes our so-called
speech acts) is thus always a situated action that
is, an action made possible and afforded by and in a
particular situation. The next section explores in
more detail what this has to say for the question of
pragmatic acts.
8 Pragmatic Acts
Pragmatic Acts 9
10 Pragmatic Acts
Bibliography
Austin J L (1962). How to do things with words. London:
Oxford University Press.
Bauman R & Sherzer J (eds.) (1974). Explorations in
the ethnography of speaking. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Booth W C (1974). A rhetoric of irony. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press (Original work published 1961).
Bu hler K (1934). Sprachtheorie. Jena: Fischer.
Freud S (1948). Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten. London: Imago. (Original work published
1916).
Gazdar G (1979). Pragmatics: implicature, presupposition
and logical form. New York: Academic Press.
Gibson J J (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Goodwin C (2000). Action and embodiment within
situated human interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 32,
14891522.
Gu Y (1993). The impasse of perlocution. Journal of
Pragmatics 20, 405432.
Haverkate H (1990). A speech act analysis of irony.
Journal of Pragmatics 14, 77109.
Hermann J (1992). Mennesket i sproget. Sprogpsykologiens
sprogbruger (Humans in language. The language user
in the light of language psychology). Copenhagen:
Gyldendal.
Hymes D (1977). Explorations in the ethnography of
speaking. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press. (Original work published 1964).
Kurzon D (1998). The speech act of incitement: perlocutionary acts revisited. Journal of Pragmatics 29,
571596.
Levinson S C (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Levinson S C (2000). Presumptive meanings: the theory
of generalized conversational implicatures. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press.
Littman D C & Mey J L (1991). A computational model
of irony. Journal of Pragmatics 15, 131151.
Mey J L (1994). Edifying Archie or: how to fool the reader.
In Parret H (ed.) Pretending to communicate. Berlin:
de Gruyter. 154172.
Mey J L (2000). When voices clash: a study in the pragmatics of literary texts. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Mey J L (2001). Pragmatics: an introduction (2nd rev. and
enlarged edn.). Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Abstract:
Recently, the established way of thinking about speech acts (in the tradition of Austin, Searle, Grice, and their
followers) has undergone a remarkable change. From being an effort to represent human words in terms of what they
do (Austin), or how they can be used to produce speech acts (Searle) or to generate implicatures (Grice), the focus
has shifted to the situation in which words are spoken and how this contributes to understanding the utterance, or
even how the situation can predefine and to a degree determine what can be said. The upshot of these
considerations is that we need a new theory, one that takes into account the inter- and transactional aspects of
speech acting. This article proposes such a theory under the label of pragmatic acts acts that work not just by their
wording but also by their being embedded in a situation in which humans act, with everything that humans bring to
their interactional forum, including body movements, emotions, and so on.
Biography:
Jacob L Mey (b. 1926) is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of Southern Denmark. Previous
appointments include the University of Oslo, Norway; the University of Texas at Austin; Georgetown University,
Washington, DC; Yale University, New Haven, CT; Tsukuba University, Japan; Northwestern University, Evanston, IL;
City University of Hong Kong; Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main; Universidade Estadual de Campinas, S.P.,
Brazil; Universidade de Braslia, Braslia, DF; the University of Haifa and Haifa Technion, Israel; as well as numerous
other institutions of research and higher learning. His research interests concern all areas of pragmatics, with an
emphasis on the social aspects of language use, the pragmatic impact of computer technologies, and the pragmatic
use of literary devices. Among his publications in these areas are Pragmalinguistics: theory and practice (Mouton, 1979),
Whose language? A study in linguistic pragmatics (Benjamins, 1985), and Pragmatics: an introduction (Blackwell, 1993; 2nd
rev. edn., 2001). His most recent publication is As Vozes da Sociedade (The voices of society; in Portuguese) (Mercado
de Letras, 2002). Regarding the computer-related aspects of pragmatics, a recent development is a new field,
cognitive technology (CT), which he is among the first to have developed, having written and edited numerous articles
and books in the area and coorganized several international conferences (together with Barbara Gorayska). The
main interest of CT is to study the effects of the computer on the human mind and how the mind determines the uses
we make of the computer as a tool. Among his other main interests are the theory of literature and poetics. These
interests culminated (following many previous articles) in his book When voices clash: a study in literary pragmatics
(Mouton de Gruyter, 2000). He is founder (with Hartmut Haberland) and chief editor of the monthly Journal of
Pragmatics. He also edits RASK: International Journal of Languages and Linguistics. Among his edited volumes are two
readers on cognitive technology (Elsevier Science, 1996 and 1999) and the 1100-page Concise encyclopedia of
pragmatics (Elsevier Science, 1998). He holds an honorary D.Phil. degree from the University of Zaragoza, Spain. He
is a member of various professional organizations, such as the Linguistic Society of America, the Copenhagen
Linguistic Circle, and the International Pragmatics Association (of which he is a member of the consultative board).
He is editor or member of the advisory board of a number of series and journals, such as Pragmatics and Beyond
(Amsterdam); Anthropological Linguistics (Berlin); Discourse and Society; Text, Language and Literature (Liverpool);
Miscelanea (Zaragoza); Psyke og Logos (Copenhagen); Semantique et Pragmatique (Orleans); and Cadernos de Linguagem
e Sociedade (Braslia).
Keywords:
Affordance
common sense
extralinguistic acts
intention
Bibliography
Bach K (1994). Semantic slack: what is said and more. In
Tsohatzidis S (ed.) Foundations of speech act theory:
philosophical and linguistic perspectives. London:
Routledge. 267291.
Bach K (1999). The semanticspragmatics distinction:
what it is and why it matters. In Turner K (ed.) The
semantics/pragmatics interface from different points of
view. Oxford/New York: Elsevier Science. 6583.
Borg E (2004). Minimal semantics. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Cappelen H & Lepore E (2005). Insensitive semantics: a
defense of semantic minimalism and speech act pluralism.
Oxford: Blackwell.
Carston R (2002). Thoughts and utterances. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Elugardo R & Stainton R (2004). Shorthand, syntactic
ellipsis and the pragmatic determinants of what is said.
Mind and Language 19(4), 359471.
Perry J (1986). Thought without representation. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume
40, 263283.
Recanati F (2002). Unarticulated constituents. Linguistics
and Philosophy 25, 299345.
Recanati F (2003). Literal meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Sperber D & Wilson D (1986). Relevance: communication
and cognition. Oxford: Blackwell.
Stanley J (2000). Context and logical form. Linguistics
and Philosophy 23, 391434.
Stanley J & Szabo Z (2000). On quantifier domain
restriction. Mind and Language 15, 219261.
Taylor K (2001). Sex, breakfast, and descriptus interruptus.
Synthese 128, 4561.
14 Pragmatic Indexing
Pragmatic Indexing
M Silverstein, The University of Chicago, Chicago,
IL, USA
2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Pragmatic Indexing 15
In this light, it becomes clear that as modern linguistic anthropology developed by phases through an
ethnography of speaking (or of communication)
(Gumperz and Hymes, 1964, 1972; Hymes, 1974;
Gumperz, 1982), its concerns for the sociocultural
contextualization of language use were the same as
those of these European theorists of a linguistique de
la parole (see Linguistic Anthropology). Similarly, the
studies of social interaction following on the Chicago
School symbolic interactionism within the discipline
of sociology Goffmans (1967, 1969, 1974, 1981),
those of ethnomethodology (Garfinkel, 1967;
Cicourel, 1974), and conversation analysis (Sudnow,
1972; Levinson, 1983; Duranti and Goodwin, 1992)
are readings of the flow of interactional events
achieved in the course of interpersonal co-participation in linguistically mediated communication (see
Ethnomethodology; Conversation Analysis; Goffman, Erving (19221982); Interactional Sociolinguistics). Intellectually, if not disciplinarily, it remained
only to bring together all these interests to the study
of actual language forms through the concept of the
pervasive indexicality of the linguistic sign, and
to understand the indexicality of language and its
perilinguistic semiotic modes in terms congenial
to the social and cultural analysis of situations of
communication.
By so doing, contemporary linguistic anthropology
(see Duranti, 2001, 2004; Silverstein and Urban,
1996) has been centered on the analysis of indexicality in every aspect of semiotic codes in use, and
particularly of language: how does the flow of discourse, as it comes to cohesive textual form, indexically construe and construct relevant sociocultural
framings of its producers (speakers, addressees, audiences, even analysts) and its denoted characters? Such
framings are on the order of shared, or at least sharable, schematizations of identity (kinds of persons),
of discourse genre (kinds of social occasions and
events), of institutional space (kinds of allocated
realms of access), and so forth. In the course of
using language and such, communicative interlocutors locate themselves and others in such framings;
the very forms they use among a language communitys varied possibilities indexically project these
framings as the understood conceptual surround of
the current communication, making them relevant to
its course and outcome. The way that the personnel of
social interaction, as we might term them, come to be
projectively located or positioned is a central part
of the work of communication. Once they are so
located, what goes on in the way of moving participants to new relative social locations, or of adding
further, concurrent social locations to ones already
presupposed, constitutes the dynamic indexical work
16 Pragmatic Indexing
Bibliography
Bar-Hillel Y (1954). Indexical expressions. Mind 63,
359379.
Benveniste E (1966). Proble`mes de linguistique ge ne rale.
Paris: Gallimard.
Benveniste E (1971). Problems in general linguistics. Meek
M E (trans.). Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami
Press.
Bucholtz M & Hall K (2004). Theorizing identity in language and sexuality research. Language in Society 33(4),
469515.
Cameron D & Kulick D (2003). Language and sexuality.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cicourel A V (1974). Cognitive sociology: language
and meaning in social interaction. New York: Free
Press.
Duranti A (ed.) (2001). Linguistic anthropology: a reader.
Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Duranti A (ed.) (2004). A companion to linguistic anthropology. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Duranti A & Goodwin C (eds.) (1992). Rethinking context:
language as an interactive phenomenon. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Eckert P & McConnell-Ginet S (2003). Language and gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Garfinkel H (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Goffman E (1967). Interaction ritual. New York: Pantheon.
Goffman E (1969). Strategic interaction. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Goffman E (1974). Frame analysis: an essay on the organization of experience. New York: Harper and Row.
Goffman E (1981). Forms of talk. Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press.
Gumperz J (1982). Discourse strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gumperz J & Hymes D (eds.) (1964). The ethnography
of communication. American Anthropologist 66(6).
Part II.
Gumperz J & Hymes D (eds.) (1972). Directions in sociolinguistics: the ethnography of communication. New
York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Hastings A & Manning M (2004). Introduction: acts
of alterity. Language & Communication 24(4),
291310.
Hymes D (1974). Foundations in sociolinguistics: an ethnographic approach. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Jakobson R (1971). Shifters, verbal categories, and the
Russian verb. In Selected writings of Roman Jakobson,
vol. 2: Word and language. The Hague: Mouton.
130147.
Kiesling S (2001a). Now I gotta watch what I say: shifting
constructions of masculinity in discourse. Journal of
Linguistic Anthropology 11(2), 250273.
Kiesling S (2001b). Stances of whiteness and hegemony in
fraternity mens discourse. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 11(1), 101115.
Pragmatic Presupposition 17
Kuryowicz J (1936). De rivation lexicale et de rivation
se mantique. Bulletin de la Socie te de Linguistique de
Paris 37, 7992.
Kuryowicz J (1960). Esquisses linguistiques. Wrocaw/
Krako w: Polska Akademia Nauk.
Kuryowicz J (1964). The inflectional categories of IndoEuropean. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.
Kuryowicz J (1972). The role of deictic elements in linguistic evolution. Semiotica 5(2), 174183.
Levinson S C (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge
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Ochs E (1992). Indexing gender. In Duranti & Goodwin
(eds.) 335358.
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York: Free Press.
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cultural description. In Basso K & Selby H (eds.)
Pragmatic Presupposition
C Caffi, Genoa University, Genoa, Italy
2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction
Both concepts pragmatic and presupposition
can be interpreted in different ways. On the one hand,
not being very remote from the intuitive, pretheoretical concept of presupposition as background assumption, the concept of presupposition covers a
wide range of heterogeneous phenomena (see Presupposition). Owing to the principle of communicative
economy as balanced by the principle of clarity
(Horn, 1984), in discourse much is left unsaid or
taken for granted.
In order to clarify the concept of presupposition,
some authors have compared speech with a Gestalt
picture in which it is possible to distinguish a ground
and a figure. Presuppositions are the ground; what is
actually said is the figure. As in a Gestalt picture,
ground and figure are simultaneous in speech; unlike
the two possible representations in the Gestalt picture, speech ground and figure have a different status,
for instance with respect to possible refutation. What
is said, i.e., the figure, is open to objection; what is
assumed, i.e., the ground, is shielded from challenge (Givo n, 1982: 101). What crucially restricts
the analogy is the fact that discourse is a dynamic
process, whereas a picture is not. At the same time
that an explicit communication is conveyed in the
ongoing discourse, an intertwined level of implicit
communication is unfolding: understanding a discourse requires an understanding of both. When
Pragmatic Presupposition 17
Kuryowicz J (1936). Derivation lexicale et derivation
semantique. Bulletin de la Societe de Linguistique de
Paris 37, 7992.
Kuryowicz J (1960). Esquisses linguistiques. Wrocaw/
Krakow: Polska Akademia Nauk.
Kuryowicz J (1964). The inflectional categories of IndoEuropean. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.
Kuryowicz J (1972). The role of deictic elements in linguistic evolution. Semiotica 5(2), 174183.
Levinson S C (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Ochs E (1992). Indexing gender. In Duranti & Goodwin
(eds.) 335358.
Reichenbach H (1947). Elements of symbolic logic. New
York: Free Press.
Silverstein M (1976). Shifters, linguistic categories, and
cultural description. In Basso K & Selby H (eds.)
Pragmatic Presupposition
C Caffi, Genoa University, Genoa, Italy
2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction
Both concepts pragmatic and presupposition
can be interpreted in different ways. On the one hand,
not being very remote from the intuitive, pretheoretical concept of presupposition as background assumption, the concept of presupposition covers a
wide range of heterogeneous phenomena (see Presupposition). Owing to the principle of communicative
economy as balanced by the principle of clarity
(Horn, 1984), in discourse much is left unsaid or
taken for granted.
In order to clarify the concept of presupposition,
some authors have compared speech with a Gestalt
picture in which it is possible to distinguish a ground
and a figure. Presuppositions are the ground; what is
actually said is the figure. As in a Gestalt picture,
ground and figure are simultaneous in speech; unlike
the two possible representations in the Gestalt picture, speech ground and figure have a different status,
for instance with respect to possible refutation. What
is said, i.e., the figure, is open to objection; what is
assumed, i.e., the ground, is shielded from challenge (Givon, 1982: 101). What crucially restricts
the analogy is the fact that discourse is a dynamic
process, whereas a picture is not. At the same time
that an explicit communication is conveyed in the
ongoing discourse, an intertwined level of implicit
communication is unfolding: understanding a discourse requires an understanding of both. When
18 Pragmatic Presupposition
available semantic theories. This rereading was basically methodological (see SemanticsPragmatics
Boundary; Pragmatics and Semantics).
From Stalnakers definition (1970) onward, a pragmatic presupposition was no longer considered a relation between utterances but rather was considered
one between a speaker and a proposition (see Propositions). This is a good starting point, but it is far from
satisfactory if the label pragmatic is meant to cover
more than semantic and idealized contextual features, i.e., if we adopt a radical pragmatic standpoint.
Let us provisionally define a pragmatic presupposition as a me nage a` trois between a speaker, the
framework of his/her utterance, and an addressee.
From a radical pragmatic standpoint, a substantivist
view of presuppositions i.e., what the presupposition of an utterance is is less promising than
a functional, dynamic, interactional, contractualnegotiating view; the question here is how presupposition works in a communicative exchange. The
pragmatic presupposition can be considered as an
agreement between speakers. In this vein, Ducrot
proposed a juridical definition whereby the basic
function of presuppositions is to establish a frame
for further discourse (1972: 94; my translation).
Presuppositions are based on a mutual, tacit agreement that has not been given before and that is constantly renewed (or, as the case may be, revoked)
during interaction. Presuppositions are grounded on
complicity.
Having been the focus of lively discussions by
linguists and philosophers of language during the
1970s, presuppositions seem now to have gone out
of fashion. At the time, the wars of presupposition
(Levinson, 2000: 397) were fought between partisans
of a semantic vs. a pragmatic view on the phenomenon. Another war is presently being fought with
regard to another though adjacent territory, that
of the intermediate categories covering the conceptual space between presupposition and implicature (see
Implicature). The fight involves the overall organization of the different layers of meaning (and their
interplay); it could be labeled the war of
(generalized) conversational implicature, if the latter
term were neutral, rather than being the banner of the
faction representing one side of the debate, namely
the post-Gricean theorists (eminently, though not exclusively, represented by Levinson [2000]). The other
side counts among its representatives, first of all,
the relevance theorists, as represented by Carston
(2002), who advance an alternative concept, called
explicature, that is intended to bridge the notions
of encoded meaning and inferred meaning (see
Relevance Theory; Implicature).
On the whole, the decline of the interest in presupposition as such can be understood, and partly justified, inasmuch as subtler distinctions between the
different phenomena have been suggested, and a descriptively adequate typology of implicata is in the
process of being built (see Sbisa`, 1999b). The decline
is less justified if the substitution is only terminological, that is, if the intuitive concept of presupposition is
replaced by a gamut of theory-dependent concepts
without offering any increase in explanatory power
with respect to authentic data. In the latter case, it is
not clear what advantages might result from the replacement of the umbrella term presupposition by
some other, more modish terminology. The point is,
once again, the meaning we assign to the word pragmatic and the object we make it refer to: either the
rarefied world of construed examples or the real
world, where people constantly presuppose certain
things in order to reach certain goals.
Once it is clear that a radical pragmatic approach to
the issue necessarily takes only the latter into consideration, the question is whether the term presupposition refers to a range of heterogeneous phenomena or,
on the contrary, to a particular type of implicatum, to
which other types can be added. But even before that,
we should ask whether, between the established notion of semantic presupposition and the Gricean notion of implicature (which, despite its popularity, still
is under scrutiny by both philosophers and linguists),
there is room for a concept like pragmatic presupposition. To answer this question, we need to say a few
words on how pragmatic presupposition is distinct
from the two types of adjacent implicata mentioned
earlier: semantic presupposition and implicature.
Pragmatic Presupposition 19