O nekim partikulama sa implikativnim svojstvima u srpskom i engleskom jeziku

Abstract

Semantic literature has described the entailments that comparatives have with respect to different scale structures found in relative and absolute adjectives. This paper aims at analyzing the implicative features that comparatives have when they are preceded by certain focal particles. The main hypothesis is that besides još (i), whose implicative features have been already described in the current literature, there are other particles in two languages which can generate additional implications and attribute the property expressed by an adjective to both entities being compared (primary and secondary term). The corpus analyses of two languages were conduced in the tagged electronic corpuses, Korpus savremenog srpskog jezika 2013 (KSSJ 2013) and Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), which allowed us to focus solely on particle + comparative sequences. The results confirm our hypothesis. The same implications apply to čak (i) and even. The paper also demonstrates that the pragmatic contributions of these particles differ depending on the scale structure of an adjective following them. (1) Open-scale adjectives. Their comparatives do not entail that the property expressed by an adjective is attributable to either primary or secondary term of comparison. With these particles, there are implications that both terms of comparison bear the given property. (2) Partly open scales. Particles have different contributions with partial (existential) and total (universal) antonyms. Comparatives of partial adjectives entail that primary terms of comparison have the given properties, but with particles preceding, there are identical implications about both entities being compared (both primary and secondary term of comparison). Comparatives of universal adjectives entail that the entity explicated by a second term of comparison cannot be characterized by the given property. In these cases, the particles do not have any impact. In other words, the original entailments are preserved. (3) Closed-scale adjectives. Comparatives of these adjectives entail that the properties being expressed by adjectives are not attributable to both terms of comparison. The presence of particles does not bring any change. However, in all four scenarios, particles generate identical conversational implicatures of surprise or unexpectedness about the state of affairs presented by an utterance.