Lexical Economy

This project investigates the relation between form and meaning in the lexicon from the perspective of bidirectional Optimality Theory (Blutner 2000), a formal linguistic model that combines Gricean pragmatics with constraint-based optimization (Hendriks and de Hoop 2001). This model predicts an ideal, ‘optimal’ lexicon in which each word has it own meaning, and each meaning is expressed by its own word. But what we actually find in natural language is a lot of synonymy and ambiguity that seems to violate this ideal mapping. The empirical focus of this project is on the synonymy that is found in ‘degree’ or ‘scale’ related language, like minimalizers, approximators, degree adverbs and classifiers that all involve an underlying notion of scale:

• een zier, barst, sikkepit, lor, klap, greintje, sodemieter, fluit, bal, … ‘a bit’

• een honderd, zo’n honderd, een stuk of honderd, rond de honderd, ongeveer honderd, om en nabij de honderd, circa honderd, honderd of wat, pak ‘m beet honderd, ruwweg honderd, plusminus honderd … ‘approximately one hundred’

• verschrikkelijk/ontzettend/hartstikke/vreselijk/onvoorstelbaar/bar … snel ‘very fast’

• een boel/hoop/stetter/stoot/wagonlading/blik/… studenten ‘a bunch of students’

 Instead of lexical economy what we see here is lexical redundancy and expressive diversification (see also Horn 1993 and Beaver and Lee 2004). The purpose of the project is to find out how bidirectional OT can deal more adequately with these patterns of synonymy. This requires a balanced combination of empirical investigations and theory formation.

 References
Beaver, D. & H. Lee (2004). Input-Output Mismatches in OT. In R. Blutner & H. Zeevat (eds), Pragmatics in Optimality Theory.
Blutner, R. (2000). Some Aspects of Optimality in Natural Language Interpretation’, Journal of Semantics 17, 189-216.
Hendriks, P. and H. de Hoop (2001). Optimality Theoretic Semantics, Linguistics and Philosophy 24, 1-32.
Horn, L. (1993). Economy and Redundancy in a Dualistic Model of Natural Language. S. Shore & M. Vilkuna, eds., SKY 1993:  1993 Yearbook of the Linguistic Association of Finland, 33-72.