{"title":"Formalizing English Contextuals","authors":"B. Gillon","doi":"10.2478/disp-2022-0011","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The paper shows that contextuals, words such as those discussed by Richard Vallée in his paper, “On local bars and imported beer”, include not only adjectives and nouns but also verbs, prepositions and adverbs. It shows, moreover, contextuals form just one subclass of words whose complements are optional, that is, words analogous to polyadic predicates of predicate logic. Just as different words, when their complements are omitted, give rise to reflexive (to wash), reciprocal (to meet) and indefinite (to eat) construals, so contextuals give rise to an indexical construal. The paper sets out how such optional complements, or polyadic predicates, as it were, can be handled completely with the syntax and semantics of English, without recourse to special pragmatic principles, lexical ambiguity or phonetically null elements. Though not discussed here, the approach nonetheless applies, it seems, to other languages, such as Chinese.","PeriodicalId":52369,"journal":{"name":"Disputatio (Spain)","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Disputatio (Spain)","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.2478/disp-2022-0011","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"Arts and Humanities","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract The paper shows that contextuals, words such as those discussed by Richard Vallée in his paper, “On local bars and imported beer”, include not only adjectives and nouns but also verbs, prepositions and adverbs. It shows, moreover, contextuals form just one subclass of words whose complements are optional, that is, words analogous to polyadic predicates of predicate logic. Just as different words, when their complements are omitted, give rise to reflexive (to wash), reciprocal (to meet) and indefinite (to eat) construals, so contextuals give rise to an indexical construal. The paper sets out how such optional complements, or polyadic predicates, as it were, can be handled completely with the syntax and semantics of English, without recourse to special pragmatic principles, lexical ambiguity or phonetically null elements. Though not discussed here, the approach nonetheless applies, it seems, to other languages, such as Chinese.
摘要:本文以Richard vallsamade在他的论文《On local bars and importation beer》中所讨论的语境词为例,指出语境词不仅包括形容词和名词,还包括动词、介词和副词。此外,它还表明,上下文只构成补语可选的词的一个子类,即类似于谓词逻辑的多元谓词的词。就像不同的词,当它们的补语被省略时,会产生反射性(洗)、互反性(见面)和无限性(吃)的解释一样,语境性也会产生索引性解释。本文阐述了这种可选的补语,或多进谓词,可以完全用英语的语法和语义来处理,而不依赖于特殊的语用原则,词汇歧义或语音空元素。虽然这里没有讨论,但这种方法似乎适用于其他语言,比如中文。