For example, inBy the time Bill had left the room it was too late to act, the verb form had left represents the leaving as anterior to the implicit orientation time referred to bythe tim
Trang 1typical of implicatures that they can be blocked or cancelled by the context – see implicate for examples
Implicature of discontinuation: implicature attached to the use of the absolute
past tense when the full situation is homogeneous and there is no linguistic or contextual indication that the situation time (⫽ time of the predicated situa-tion) is included in (and hence shorter than) the time of the full situation The implicature says that under these conditions the situation time can be assumed
to coincide with the time of the full situation and hence to be over at the zero-time For example,Meg swore a lot when she was younger implicates that this
is no longer the case This implicature would be cancelled by the contextual addition ofand she still does.
Implicit condition: condition that is not overtly expressed but is implicit in one
of the constituents of the sentence, for example in a pro-form (e g [I think we should go home now.] Otherwise it will be dark before we get home
(‘other-wise’ ⫽ ‘if we don’t go’)), or in a nominal (e g That would be quite interest-ing (‘that’ ⫽ ‘if that happened’, etc.)).
Implicit orientation time: orientation time which is implicit in the semantics of
a temporal conjunction For example, inBy the time Bill had left the room it was too late to act, the verb form had left represents the leaving as anterior to
the implicit orientation time referred to bythe time in the phrasal conjunction
by the time (that) Similarly, in I wanted to be in the pub before Ted arrived,
the conjunctionbefore means ‘before the time at which’ and arrived is a relative
past tense form representing Ted’s arrival as T-simultaneous with the implicit orientation time (lexicalized by the time in the paraphrase ‘before the time
at which’)
Implicit pre-present: said of the length of the pre-present zone in the absence
of a time-specifying adverbial or another contextual indication specifying this length If it remains implicit, the pre-present zone is taken to be the shortest period that makes sense in the given context Thus, inHave you had breakfast yet? the time span leading up to now will be interpreted as something like
‘since you got up’, not as, say, ‘in the last few weeks’
Inceptive aspect: see ingressive aspect.
Inchoative aspect: see ingressive aspect See also partly inchoative
interpreta-tion
Inclusion: ‘Time A includes time B’ means that B is shorter than A and falls
within the boundaries of A For example, inI am his daughter, the time of the
full situation includes the temporal zero-point (time of speech) Inclusion is one form of the containment relation that exists not only between the time of
Trang 2the full situation and the situation time but also between an Adv-time (⫽ an
adverbially specified time interval) and a situation time (or another orientation
time) For example, inJim had already left before breakfast the Adv-time
indi-cated by before breakfast includes the (unspecified) orientation time to which
the situation time (⫽ the time of Jim’s leaving) is represented as T-anterior
(Apart from inclusion, containment can in principle also mean coincidence
Thus, in I left at five the Adv-time contains the situation time in terms of
coincidence: the time indicated by at five coincides with the time of my
leav-ing.) What we call inclusion is often referred to as ‘proper inclusion’
Inclusive adverbial: see inclusive duration adverbial
Inclusive duration adverbial: adverbial measuring the duration of (the
actual-ization of) a situation by answering the questionWithin what time?, e g [He
finished the work] in an hour, [Everything will be arranged] within the next
five minutes Such an adverbial can be added to bounded clauses only, e g I
ran the marathon in less than two hours; Within the next five minutes I had
served six clients (The same adverbials are not inclusive adverbials in clauses
that receive an inchoative interpretation, as inHe was here in an hour, which
means ‘It was an hour before he was here’.)
Inclusive reference: reference to a set which implies or implicates reference to
all the members of the set For example, inI cleared away the glasses after the
party, the reference to the set of glasses is (by implicature) interpreted as
refer-ence to all the glasses of the relevant set
Inclusiveness implicature: implicature that definite noun phrases should be
in-terpreted as having inclusive reference, i e as referring to all the members of
the set denoted by the definite noun phrase Thus, I’ve drunk the bottles of
beer implicates that I have drunk all the bottles of beer in question.
Incurable habit: typical behaviour that is (a) unpredictable in that it actualizes
from time to time but not at set times, (b) unintentional (hence not controlled
by an agent) and (c) usually interpreted by the speaker as annoying or
disturb-ing An incurable habit is typically expressed in a clause which combines a
progressive verb form with an adverbial like always, forever, perpetually,
con-stantly, etc For example, the sentence She’s always imagining everybody is
looking at her refers to a habit which consists of a repetition of a kind of
situation that is interpreted as lying beyond the control of the subject referent,
in the sense that she cannot help thinking that everybody is looking at her
(because it forms part of her nature to entertain such imaginary ideas)
Indefinite interpretation (or indefinite reading): one of three possible
W-inter-pretations of a clause in the present perfect On an indefinite interpretation,
the situation time is located in the pre-present zone, and the time of the full
Trang 3situation is taken to precede the temporal zero-point and to be non-adjacent to
it This reading is called ‘indefinite’ because it implies that the precise temporal location of the situation time remains indefinite: all that we know is that the situation time lies somewhere in the pre-present For example: Have you ever been to Togo?; [Nobody can enter the house, because] I have locked the door and hidden the key.
Indefinite perfect: present perfect tense form used in a clause receiving an
indef-inite interpretation
Indefinite reading: see indefinite interpretation.
Independent clause: clause that is used as a sentence or which is one of the
coordinate clauses of a compound sentence or which functions as a head clause
in a complex sentence (see also matrix) ‘Independent clause’ thus means ‘syn-tactically independent clause’, i e clause which is not a subclause
Indirect binding: a special form of T-binding: the situation time of a subclause
is T-bound by the situation time of a clause which is not the head clause on which the subclause in question syntactically depends but a clause higher up the syntactic tree The situation of the subclause in question is then interpreted
as W-simultaneous with the situation of its head clause, but the tense form of the subclause does not express T-simultaneity For example: [I remembered that] when I had first met him he had been wearing blue jeans Here, the
situation times of had met and of had been wearing are interpreted as
W-simultaneous with each other, but neither tense form expresses this relation: both situation times are represented as T-anterior to the situation time of re-membered Compare: direct binding.
Indirect reported speech: type of represented speech in which the reported
ut-terance or thought is not quoted as an independent sentence (as in He said: “I
am ill.”, which is an instance of direct reported speech) but is reported in the
form of a subclause (e g.He said that he was ill).
Indirect result: resultant state which is not a direct result (i e a resultant state
that inevitably comes about when a situation is completed) but whose existence
is implicated by a perfect tense form used in a particular kind of context.
Consider, for example, the following piece of discourse: [I’ve taken a lot of responsibility in my first job already.] I’ve taken the savings to the bank, I’ve dealt with difficult customers and I’ve locked up the shop Here, the present
perfect tense forms implicate that I am considered a responsible employee, or that I have shown that I am a very capable employee, or something similar These implicated present results are indirect results
Indirect speech: see indirect reported speech, free indirect speech.
Trang 4Infinitival clause (or infinitive clause): nonfinite clause whose verb form is an
infinitive, e g.for you to come earlier in I was hoping for you to come earlier.
Infinitive: see present infinitive and perfect infinitive When we simply speak
of ‘infinitive’, we normally have the present infinitive (i e the unmarked
op-tion) in mind
Infinitive clause: see infinitival clause.
Ingressive aspect (or inchoative aspect or inceptive aspect): kind of grammatical
aspect Ingressive aspect means that the speaker uses a special verb form to
represent the actualization of a situation as just beginning This aspect is not
grammaticalized in English: English does not have a special grammatical form
to express ingressive meaning It uses an aspectualizer like begin or start
(in-serted before the verb) instead
Intensional domain: a nonfactual possible world established, for example, by
a future tense form or by an intensional verb like imagine, say, think, want,
etc An intensional domain is a domain of interpretation which has its own
presuppositions and truth conditions, in terms of which propositions can be
evaluated and interpreted An intensional domain always functions as a
tempo-ral domain After a weak intensional verb (like say), the complement clause
can optionally shift the domain (e g He said that John and Shirley {were /
are} not married) This is not normally possible after a strong intensional verb
(such asimagine, fancy, dream, wonder, etc.): [Is that her?] I thought she {was /
*is} taller.
Intensional interpretation (or opaque interpretation): interpretation in terms of
an intensional world For example, inJohn believes that Paris is the capital of
Italy, the that-clause is true in the intensional world of John’s belief, but not
in (what the speaker knows to be) the actual world That is,Paris is the capital
of Italy is true on an intensional (opaque) interpretation, but not on a
transpar-ent one
Intensional verb: verb (likeclaim, believe, imagine, etc.) creating an intensional
domain See also strong intensional verb and weak intensional verb
Intensional world: possible world which is not the actual world (e g the world
created by anif-clause) See also intensional domain.
Intentionality: the idea that an action is performed intentionally (consciously,
deliberately) This feature is often included in the definition of agentivity, but
not so in this book (A sleep-walker opening a door is an agent, and so is
someone opening a door under the influence of hypnosis, but in neither case is
the agent in question acting intentionally.)
Intransitive verb: (a) Strictly speaking: a verb that can only take a subject
argument, i e a verb which cannot be followed by a complement (e g sit);
Trang 5(b) Informally, a verb that could take a complement but is used intransitively (i e without a complement), e g.eat in John was still eating when I left.
Inversion: the phenomenon that the syntactic subject does not precede the verb
form but follows the operator (i e the auxiliary or first of the auxiliaries) For example, there is as a rule inversion in independent interrogative clauses that are notwh-questions Compare Has John left? (with inversion) with John has left and Who has left? (without inversion) Inversion also occurs with be and have.
Inverted pseudo-cleft: pseudo-cleft in which the value constituent is processed
as syntactic subject and the variable constituent as subject complement (e g.A
bookwas what he gave me) See also specificational sentence.
Irrealis: referring to a counterfactual world.
Irregular verb (or strong verb): verb that does not form its past tense and / or
past participle by the mere addition of a dental suffix (written as -ed or -d) to
the stem of the verb (e g blow – blew – blown; bring – brought – brought; creep – crept – crept; go – went – gone).
It -cleft: cleft introduced byit For example: It was The Bard who wrote: “Let’s kill all the lawyers”; It is with a profound sense of regret that I announce my resignation.
Iterative aspect: see repetitive aspect.
Iterative verb: verb which represents a kind of situation as consisting of a rapid
repetition of subsituations of the same kind, such ashammer, twinkle, stutter, rattle, stammer, etc In other words: verb which has [⫹ iterative] as one of its
ontological aspect features
L-bounded: said of a bounded situation whose boundedness is a matter of
linguistic representation (rather than of interpretation based on pragmatic in-ference) Also said of a clause or sentence representing a situation as bounded (i e as ending) For example: Jim was in the library from two to four One
case of L-boundedness is when a bounded meaning is produced by the combi-nation of a telic verb phrase and a nonprogressive verb form, as inI will write three letters (in the next half-hour): such a sentence is L-bounded.
Lexical aspect (or ontological aspect or Aktionsart): linguistic category
pertain-ing to the way in which the lexical material in the verb phrase determines one
or more inherent characteristics of a kind of situation (or, more correctly, a type of situation-template), for example, whether it is (conceived of and repre-sented as) durative or punctual (compare, for example, run with arrive), telic
or atelic, dynamic or static, etc
Lexical meaning: semantic meaning of a word which has to do with the typical
characteristics of the referents of the word in the actual world (or in whichever
Trang 6possible world is being talked about) For example, the lexical verbkill has a
lexical meaning because it refers to a specific type of situation which exists in
the world as we know it The auxiliary have in They have left does not have
a lexical meaning but has a grammatical function: it is used to build a perfect
tense form
Lexical verb (or full verb): verb which differs from an auxiliary in that (a) it
is not a defective verb, (b) it has a full lexical meaning and (c) with the
excep-tion of be, it requires do-support (i e the addition of do) in some types of
questions, negative clauses, etc (see NICE-properties) For example: explode,
play, melt, resemble, etc.
Linking verb: see copula.
L-nonbounded: said of a nonbounded situation whose nonboundedness is a
matter of linguistic representation (rather than of pragmatic inference) Also
said of a clause or sentence failing to represent a situation as L-bounded
Main clause: term sometimes used as an alternative to ‘head clause’ (⫽ any
clause on which another clause is syntactically dependent) and sometimes as
an alternative to ‘matrix’ (⫽ highest clause in the syntactic tree structure of a
complex sentence) Because it is potentially ambiguous between these two
meanings, the term ‘main clause’ is not used in this work We use the
unequivo-cal terms ‘head clause’ and ‘matrix’ instead
Main verb: form of a lexical verb which is used in a verb form that also
involves one or more auxiliaries (e g.walked in should have walked, or
work-ing in may have been workwork-ing).
Matrix: head clause which forms part of a complex sentence and is not a
subclause of another head clause, e g the clause John said in John said that
he was thirsty because he had worked hard and that he badly needed a drink.
In other words, the matrix is the highest clause in the inverted tree structure
representing the syntactic structure of a complex sentence
Matrix clause: see matrix.
Maxim of Quantity: one of the Gricean Maxims The most important claim of
this Maxim is that a cooperative speaker should give the addressee all the
information that is needed for a good understanding of the sentence(s) uttered
Because of this Maxim, a sentence like Kill the hostages! implicates (and will
be understood as meaning) thatall the hostages should be killed (otherwise the
speaker should add an expression restricting the reference to the set of
hos-tages, as inKill the oldest six of the hostages!) – see inclusiveness implicature.
Maxim of Relation (or Maxim of Relevance): one of the Gricean Maxims The
most important claim of this Maxim is that a cooperative speaker should only
Trang 7say things that are relevant to the current discourse This is why in [“I don’t think John has a girl-friend.” ⫺ “Well,] he took Sybil out three times last week,
the reply suggests (⫽ implicates) that John does have a girl-friend, namely Sybil
Maxim of Relevance: see Maxim of Relation.
Measure phrase: phrase ‘measuring’ a time interval, i e indicating the duration
of the interval or making clear where its right boundary lies The interval in question may be the time span taken up by the actualization of a situation In the following examples, the measure phrases are underlined:John walked three miles / Simon slept for four hours / Soames repaired all these cars this morning.
Metalinguistic negation: wide scope negation used to reject the truth of the
sentence as a whole, i e to contradict a statement or implicature to the con-trary For example: [“The party was boring.”] ⫺ “The party was not boring.
[On the contrary, it was quite lively.”].
Modal backshifting: the substitution of the past perfect for the past tense in a
before-clause in order to trigger a not-yet-factual meaning For example,
whereasI saw him before he saw me is roughly equivalent to ‘He saw me after
I saw him’,I saw him before he had seen me is interpreted as ‘He had not seen
me yet when I saw him’
Modality: semantic category comprising two types of meaning: (a) the
repre-sentation of the speaker’s assessment of the likelihood that a proposition is true (or that the situation referred to by a proposition actualizes), and (b) the representation of one of the factors affecting the (non)actualization of the situa-tion referred to, such as (un)willingness, (im)possibility, (in)ability, obligasitua-tion, necessity, advisability, permission, prohibition, volition, etc Modality which has to do with the truth of the utterance is called epistemic modality The other type is referred to as nonepistemic (or root) modality
Momentary: (synonym of punctual): lasting for a very short moment only,
having no observable duration
Mood: grammatical (formal) category referring to the systematic use of lexical
verb forms not preceded by a modal auxiliary to express particular kinds of modal meaning English is generally considered to have three moods, viz the indicative, the imperative and the subjunctive
Multiple-orientation-time adverbial: time-specifying adverbial denoting an
Adv-time which contains two or more orientation times (which are usually situation times) For example, in Yesterday Sue left before Beth arrived, the
times of the two situations referred to are included in the Adv-time specified
byyesterday, which is therefore a multiple-orientation-time adverbial.