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Interpreting certain adverbs: semantics or pragmatics?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Adrienne Lehrer
Adrienne Lehrer
Affiliation:
University of Arizona
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Extract

Charles Morris' division of signs into syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics has been handed down to linguists and philosophers of language, who have more or less accepted the validity of the categories. However, the generative semanticists have argued, persuasively in my opinion, that the line between syntactics and semantics is not sharp (cf., e.g. Lakoff, 1971). By examining a small but important class of adverbs, I will try to show that the line between semantics and pragmatics is also not sharp and that no non-arbitrary line can be drawn. What is needed for an adequate description of language is a theory that can predict and explain borderline cases without forcing them into pre-established categories arbitrarily.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , September 1975 , pp. 239 - 248
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975

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