Bringing together different theoretical frameworks, the volume provides thought-provoking discussions of how the notion of context can be understood, modeled, and implemented in linguistics.

Linguistic evaluation has become an important area of inquiry in recent years. In the traditions of, e.g., lexical semantics, phraseology, corpus linguistics, and interactional linguistics, a large inventory of linguistic means have been identified by which speakers can express evaluative meanings. However, the class of German sentential idioms, e.g., Das kannst du dir in die Haare schmieren , has not gained much attention. This paper explores how the evaluative meaning of German sentential idioms is constructed syntactically, semantically, and pragmatically. In (...) particular, it is investigated how the meaning of these idioms interacts with the context in which they are used. A context model of evaluation is developed in which the cognitive category of cause plays a central role. The model is applied to contextualized examples, the findings supporting the hypothesis that cause is one of the core categories of evaluation. (shrink)

Though âeoepejorationâe is an important notion for linguistic analysis and theory, there is still a lack of theoretical understanding and sound descriptive analysis. In this timely collection, the phenomenon of pejoration is studied from a number of angles. It contains studies from phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics, and deals with diverse languages and their variants. Thus, the collection will appeal to all those linguists with a genuine interest in locating pejoration at the grammar-pragmatics interface.

In this paper, I investigate the German N hin, N her construction. I first provide a close description of its syntactic and semantic properties, arguing that N hin, N her is a grammatical construction. I then show that this construction is not entirely idiosyncratic, as there are specific pragmatic aspects contributing to its meaning and functional potential. These are the deictic adverbs hin and her, restrictions on the choice of nouns, and effects of syntactic disintegration. I argue that a purely (...) semantic analysis of the construction as concessive or concessive conditional is insufficient, as it neglects pragmatic processes of contextual enrichment and implicature. Based on these assumptions, I provide a detailed analysis of the discursive and interactional functions of the construction, showing that it is a prime candidate for construing textual coherence and for subjectification and stance taking. Evidence comes from a corpus of newspaper examples. (shrink)