A Sample of Self-Definers—Semantics & Pragmatics
The SpecGram Book Elves™
Here is a third hand-curated selection from “Appendix A: A Self-Defining Linguistic Glossary”, a.k.a. “The only truly reliable cram sheet for your Linguistics 101 final”, from The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics.
- Semantic bleaching is literally terrible.
- Everyone believes someone will interpret this de dicto, but they don’t know who.
- Everyone believes someone will interpret this de re, for that someone’s paranoia is universally known.
- This is a deictic... and that, and these, and those, too.
- that’s distal
- Focus, I enjoy lecturing about.
- The Gricean Maxim of Manner (“Clarity”) eschews obfuscation and espouses elucidation.
- The Gricean Maxim of Relation (“Relevance”) likes purple giraffes in a bathtub with brightly colored tools.
- The Gricean Maxim of Quality (“Truth”) does not exist.
- The Gricean Maxim of Quantity (“Information”) did that thing the other day, with the guy from that place.
- two homophones, too
- The idiom chunk will have to be let out of the bag.
- I’m looking for an indefinite non-specific. Do you have one?
- I’m looking for an indefinite specific. Do you have it?
- Yeesh, it’s a gosh-darned minced oath again!
- Lady Mondegreen
- I order you to use a performative.
- this is proximal
- all quantifiers
- old-style retronym
- two nice, amusing semantic shifts
More to come...
