• Annual Conference on Human and Language Technology
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• 2004.10d
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• pp.323-328
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• 2004

The main concern of the paper is to establish a hypothesis in which the form thi is treated as a particular Contrastive Topic marker in Vietnamese sentence structure. We have investigated that the form thican be placed after a topical nominal or verbal to compose a Contrastive Topic phrase. Not only the subjects or objects but predicates in Vietnamese can have a CT interpretation with the marker thi. The thi-phrase not only refers to an entity or event the speaker wants to talk about, but also indicates that there exist contrastive alternatives the speaker wants to talk about. The nature of the contrastive topic decides the nature the alternative set and the choice of the topic of the implicated proposition. When the set of alternatives does not have the characteristic of scale, we have a descriptive opposite implicature. Again, if the contrastive set is a scalar set, we gat a denial-of expectation implicature.

• Language and Information
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.107-124
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• 2000

This paper reports the syntactic distribution of amu-N-to/-ilato/-ina phrase, which are representative polarity sensitive items. (PSIs) in Korean, and ac- counts for their semantic characteristics in therms of "arbitrary choice quantification" and "concession" In the first section, we extensively illustrate the distributional behaviour of the PSIs in various costructions and roughly generalize the distribu- tion in terms of "(anti/non-) verdicality" Section 2 claims amu denotes an arbi- trary choice quantifier and the particles -to/-ilato/-ina as "concessive" markers, so the compounds denote a special element in a pragmatic scale determined by con- text/situation, Section 3. based on the pragmatics of scalar implicature, accounts for the apparent ambiguity of PSIs between "universal"and "existential"readings and further characterizes the difference among the concessive markers -to/-ilato/-ina in terms of "quantity/ quality scale."rkers -to/-ilato/-ina in terms of "quantity/ quality scale."

• Language and Information
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.47-65
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• 2006

In this paper I address the problems of defining the semantics of numerals and accounting for how pragmatic inferences are made. I basically assume that a numeral n simply means '${\lambda}P{\lambda}x[#(x)n\;&\;P(x)]$', as commonly assumed. Even when a numeral n has 'at least' interpretation, a sentence with the number does not entail a sentence with n replaced with n-1. But when a sentence with n-1 holds, it is possible that a sentence with n or a larger number holds too. This is not based on a semantic relation, but on pragmatic informativeness. In addition to pragmatic strength, the actual reading of a numeral is affected by some background knowledge of generalizations about the world, but the ordering of pragmatic strength among numbers always plays a role in determining unilateral interpretations. In such a case, we can assume that a set of numbers relevant in the context forms a scale. Forming a scale does not necessarily lead to a unilateral interpretation. The bilateral interpretation of a number is possible in the context where it is known whether or not alternative sentences with contextually salient alternative numbers are true.

• Language and Information
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.85-96
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• 1999

This paper deals with questions involving the polysemous meanings of Korean delimiter to, which include existence of a sister item, polar values, emphasis, reciprocality, and concession among others. In this paper it is argued that the basic meaning of to is the implication of a sister proposition and that various other meanings can be pragmatically derived from the basic meaning. The pragmatic notion of emphasis is defined formally and it is shown that various meanings of to can be accounted for by investigating how the speaker exploits the background knowledge which the speaker and the listener share in a speech context. According to what type of the context is made use of by the speaker, the various polysemous meanings are analyzed as involving either a simple implicature or a series of implicatures, i.e., scalar implicatures, so the various meanings of the delimiter can be attributable to the different attunement of the speaker to different kinds of context.

• Language and Information
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.71-89
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• 2002

This paper proposes that concession should be analysed in terms of inferences based on the likelihood of event occurrence and that an alternative set of events should be presupposed in such inferences. In order to give an empirical content to this proposal this paper discusses the pragmatic aspects of the English word even and the Korean morpheme -lafo and claims that the notion of likelihood is the basis of the pragmatic inference of concession and the quasi-universal quantification erect. It is also claimed that unexpectedness, which is conceptually tied to concession, on the other hand, pertains to the same kind of pragmatic inference but presupposes the existence of an alternative set of individuals instead of an alternative set of situations.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.57 no.3
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• pp.429-455
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• 2011

Numbers have been regarded as one-sided, and their exactly readings have been understood as the results of scalar implicature. This Neo-Gricean view on numbers becomes less persuasive due to theoretical and experimental counterarguments. In spite of growing evidence for theirtwo-sided readings, numbers are still one-sided in modal sentences. Moreover, the occurrence of a negative operator may worsen the acceptability of modal sentences with numbers. In the framework of Vector Space Semantics, I have derived two-sided readings of numbers with the simple notions of monotonicity of modals and scopal relations between modals and numbers. I have also argued that the awkwardness incurred by negation is the result of a split set of vectors for a number. The incoherent set of vectors is understood as the lack of an ideal behavior, which is against the deontic modality of the sentence.