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"the monosemic nature of discourse markers"

Posted: May 27th, 2019, 9:10 pm
by Stirling Bartholomew
Seems to me that arguing for the "the monosemic nature of discourse markers"[1] indicates an underlying "code model" of communication.

[1] Rudolph PhD Thesis p.190 (pdf 213) see also chapter one.

Re: "the monosemic nature of discourse markers"

Posted: May 28th, 2019, 6:10 am
by RandallButh
Assuming an absolute "monosemy" is how many people get off-track in their semantics and produce counter-intuitive results.
Classic example in Greek/NT is "no time in the Greek verb" of the aspect-only crowd. (They do the same thing in Hebrew, too, although there it is by not recognizing or ignoring that yiqtol is mostly perfective in future contexts.) Back to Greek, it is the ancient Greeks themselves who called on time/tense to explain their indicative verbs.

Cognitive Linguistics is a primary whistleblower against monosemic approaches to simple syntactic-morph categories that must cover a world of different contexts. A person can pretty much assume polysemy when the categories get small enough and there is a period of time for diachronic development. For example in Hebrew yiqtol [vs. qatal]: in future contexts the yiqtol defaults to future perfective indicative "will do this" [not usually "will be doing"] although in legal contexts the yiqtol will default to volitional "need to do this".

Re: "the monosemic nature of discourse markers"

Posted: May 28th, 2019, 7:23 am
by Matthew Longhorn
Monosemy does seem to be a go-to option for relevance theorists. Whilst I appreciate their desire to not multiply meanings beyond what is necessary, allowing for narrowing and broadening etc to provide the correct understanding, Bybee’s usage based approach has been helpful for me. I haven’t read enough of her yet, but what I have read looking at grammaticalisation over time where pragmatic meanings become distinct part of the lexical meaning makes a lot of sense

That said, procedural markers I would assume to be less flexible than conceptual/content and that is an RT assumption I can get behind.
One thing that Rudolph does indicate is that the increased interaction of non-native speakers with the language would allow for deterioration of finer distinctions. This very much matches with what I have heard in some linguistics lectures. Given that Koine was also subject to this I would assume the issue was more prevalent than he allows for this time period.

Re: "the monosemic nature of discourse markers"

Posted: May 28th, 2019, 5:35 pm
by Stirling Bartholomew
RandallButh wrote: May 28th, 2019, 6:10 am Assuming an absolute "monosemy" is how many people get off-track in their semantics and produce counter-intuitive results.
{...}
Cognitive Linguistics is a primary whistleblower against monosemic approaches to simple syntactic-morph categories that must cover a world of different contexts. A person can pretty much assume polysemy ...
Thanks Randall, I am reading Rudolph PhD Thesis and wondering why he is advocating: "The monosemic nature of discourse markers." The thesis is easier to read than than the article which suffered from infelicitous editing. His dismissive treatment earlier frameworks and branding everyone as crypto-Saussureians makes me skeptical about his project.

He is swimming in familiar waters and when he is repeating ideas from his bibliographic resources I have no problem with his presentation but when he turns to his main project he seems to go off into uncharted territory. His attitude toward polysemy is just one example.

Re: "the monosemic nature of discourse markers"

Posted: May 28th, 2019, 6:48 pm
by Stirling Bartholomew
Matthew Longhorn wrote: May 28th, 2019, 7:23 am Monosemy does seem to be a go-to option for relevance theorists.
Really?
This account combines the idea of (radical) semantic underspecification in the lexicon with a theory of pragmatic strengthening (based on conversational implicatures).

Lexical Semantics and Pragmatics
Reinhard Blutner, Berlin
How do you understand (radical) semantic underspecification ?

Re: "the monosemic nature of discourse markers"

Posted: May 29th, 2019, 12:39 am
by Matthew Longhorn
Good point Stirling, I misapplied the term monosemy pretty horrendously there and clearly need to go back and re-read some things to ensure I use the terms correctly. Thanks for flagging that, it would seem like the concept of "use it or lose it" has applied to me here - opportunity to learn again

Re: "the monosemic nature of discourse markers"

Posted: May 29th, 2019, 7:58 am
by Barry Hofstetter
Matthew Longhorn wrote: May 29th, 2019, 12:39 am Good point Stirling, I misapplied the term monosemy pretty horrendously there and clearly need to go back and re-read some things to ensure I use the terms correctly. Thanks for flagging that, it would seem like the concept of "use it or lose it" has applied to me here - opportunity to learn again
Considering the various ways terminology gets used differently by different scholars, you may not have misused it, only misapplied some usage that you picked up elsewhere. You'd think linguists would know better, but no... :)

Re: "the monosemic nature of discourse markers"

Posted: May 29th, 2019, 9:53 pm
by Daniel Semler
Barry Hofstetter wrote: May 29th, 2019, 7:58 am
Matthew Longhorn wrote: May 29th, 2019, 12:39 am Good point Stirling, I misapplied the term monosemy pretty horrendously there and clearly need to go back and re-read some things to ensure I use the terms correctly. Thanks for flagging that, it would seem like the concept of "use it or lose it" has applied to me here - opportunity to learn again
Considering the various ways terminology gets used differently by different scholars, you may not have misused it, only misapplied some usage that you picked up elsewhere. You'd think linguists would know better, but no... :)
I suspect it's deliberate: monosemy being polysemic - truly a linguists joke, that :)

Thx
D