荷恩等級關系變化評論（英文） horn degree

1、chapter 1 introduction: about the horn scalea critic study of the validity of the horn scale荷恩等級關系變化評論name: bao mandegree: master of arts major: foreign linguistics and applied linguisticssupervisor: zhu yueschool of foreign languages, anhui university10. may. 2005abstractthe horn scale was intended

2、 to serve as an effective means of inferring the generalized quantity implicatures by levinson in the 1980s, but many linguists or pragmatists cast doubt upon its universality ever since its appearance in the neo-gricean pragmatic apparatus; and what is more, huang yan even rejects it in his own stu

3、dy of anaphora though levinson mainly depends on it to study the same subject.generally speaking, there are about three representative viewpoints on the horn scale, namely, that of the anglo-american pragmatists, that of the continental pragmatists and that of the chinese pragmatists. the anglo-amer

4、ican pragmatists proposed that the horn scale can help interpret the conventional or generalized quantity implicatures of utterances in that the vocabulary of a language usually is the grammaticalization of certain stereotypical relations in the daily life of human being. as for the continental prag

5、matists, they also hold the view that there must be some “regularity” in peoples communication with each other, but the horn scale is too normative or rational to catch this regularity. mey insisted on the notion of quantity as an explanation of the communicative principle; on the other hand, jef ve

6、rschueren firmly believes in conversationalists active choice of strategies in any speaking event. in china, xu shenghuan is the first pragmatist who draws our attention to the horn scale and levinsons three principles. through his ten articles, among others, xu not only explains the apparatus of le

7、vinsons three principles, but also expands on the horn scale. however, several other pragmatists disagree with him, and they suggest that the horn scale is reasonable or scientific to some extent, but it lacks validity and applicability.in order to test the validity of the horn scale, the writer of

8、this paper designed a questionnaire and tested it among 81 students. the result of the experiment suggests that the original hypothesis of the paper is correct, that is, the factor of gender does influence the operation of the horn scale though the degree of the influence may vary according to diffe

9、rent registers. then the paper centers upon the so-called conventional implicatures put forward by levinson. it is obvious that if we take the three factors, viz., the speakers intention, the recipients interpretations and particular circumstances into account, the conventional implicatures can not

10、be inferred simply through the operation of the horn scale.this paper focuses on the limited applicability of the horn scale out of consideration for different notions of different speech communities towards quantity contained in the scale terms. there are totally six chapters included in this paper

11、. chapter one is a brief introduction of the notion of the horn scale. chapter two is a general survey of three viewpoints on the horn scale, namely, that of the anglo-american pragmatists, that of the continental pragmatists and that of the chinese pragmatists. chapter three mainly focuses on an ex

12、periment conducted among eighty-one college students, and the analysis of the result proves that gender differences influence the interpretation of certain horn scale terms. then the writer goes on to illustrate that the so-called conventional implicatures inferred from the quantity principle do not

13、 hold valid. chapter four focuses on a reanalysis of some examples cited by professor xu shenghuan, who is the first pragmatist that systematically introduces the neo-gricean principles and the horn scale to china. in this chapter, the writer casts doubts upon the over-detailed stipulations of the h

14、orn scale, pointing out that these stipulations actually ruin the validity of the horn scale. chapter five aims at providing an illustration of the influence from the politeness principle on the operation of the horn scale. the writer tries to prove that the politeness principle works in a certain w

15、ay so that people can not refer to the horn scale as an inference apparatus all the time. chapter six is the conclusion of the paper, claiming that various pragmatic factors prevent the horn scale, as a pragmatic inference apparatus, from being valid.keywords: horn scale invalidity gender intention

16、politeness principle論文摘要語用學家列文森在研究前指代問題時，逐漸將荷恩等級視作語用推理的重要契機，并以此為基礎構建了新格賴斯會話含意理論。列文森認為利用荷恩等級可以推導出話語的潛在數(shù)量會話含意。然而，很多學者卻認為盡管新會話含意能夠自圓其說，但它不能夠作為會話含意推導的終極參照，其原因就在于荷恩等級并不具有充分的解釋力。語用學家黃衍在構建自己的前指代理論時，甚至完全拋棄了荷恩等級。一般說來， 有三種具有代表性的視角值得關注：英美語用學家的視角、歐洲大陸語用學家的視角以及中國語用學家的視角。列文森作為英美語用學家的代表人物，認為人們?nèi)粘Ｉ钪兄匾某Ｒ?guī)關系都已在詞匯中被語法

17、化了，因此他提出可以運用荷恩等級解讀話語的規(guī)約數(shù)量會話含義。對于歐洲大陸的語用學家來說，人們在用語言交際時，確實有某種“規(guī)律”可循，但是僅僅靠荷恩等級或列文森三原則來解釋會話含義是遠遠不夠的。梅伊在他的“交際原則”中雖然也提到了“量”的重要性，但他更重視的是不同的文化對“量”的不同的表達方式。維索倫則認為在會話過程中，會話雙方對于語言策略的選擇才是解讀會話含義的關鍵。在中國的語用學家中，徐盛桓是第一個系統(tǒng)地引進荷恩等級和列氏三原則的學者。他不僅對荷恩等級的工作原理作了詳盡的介紹，還對其進行了修改和擴充，將數(shù)量會話含義推導規(guī)則由原來的兩條擴充至六條。然而，隨著徐氏理論的完善，其他學者的批評意見也

18、接踵而至，即荷恩等級很合理，也具有科學根據(jù)，但是不實用。本文共分為六章。第一章簡要介紹荷恩等級的運作原理及具體規(guī)則。第二章則是對三種具有代表性的觀點的概述。其中，英美語用學家關注的是如何利用荷恩等級使等級含意的推導規(guī)范化；歐洲大陸語用學家則堅持關注文化差異在會話含意推導中的地位；而在國內(nèi)的語用學家中，徐盛桓教授致力于介紹和完善等級含意理論，反對的意見則認為該理論缺乏實用性。本文作者針對荷恩等級的運作，設計了一套問卷。第三章即是對這套問卷調(diào)查結(jié)果的分析，證明若以性別作為自變量，荷恩等級的運作會受到影響。也就是說，女性受試者和男性受試者在相似的情景中會選擇語義強度不同的詞項描述同一事件，因此，對于

19、性別不同的會話參與者，根據(jù)荷恩等級推導出的規(guī)約含意可能也會不同。在第四章中，作者重新分析了徐盛桓教授論文中出現(xiàn)過的例句，旨在表明徐教授對荷恩等級的修訂未免有些過于細致，以致于忽視了其他很多語用因素，從而使荷恩等級幾乎完全喪失了推導的有效性。第五章中，作者試圖從理論上解釋荷恩等級缺乏有效性的原因。在言語交際過程中，禮貌原則常常會阻止交際雙方嚴格依據(jù)荷恩等級進行語用推導，有時甚至會使交際雙方完全放棄荷恩等級。第六章是對全文的總結(jié)，即如果將說話人意圖、聽話人的推論及會話環(huán)境三個因素帶入會話含意的推導過程，荷恩等級就很難成功運作了。關鍵詞：荷恩等級、有效性、性別、意圖、禮貌原則figuresfigur

20、e 1figure 2figure 3192425contentsacknowledgementsenglish abstractchinese abstractfigureschapter 1 introduction: about the horn scalechapter 2 a general survey of three viewpoints on the horn scale 2.1 the anglo-american pragmatists points of view 2.2 the continental pragmatists perspective 2.3 chine

21、se pragmatists points of view 2.3.1 xu shenghuans study on the horn scale 2.3.2 other scholars opinionchapter 3 the problematic universality of the horn scale 3.1 gender differences on the notion of quantity 3.2 data collection and analysis 3.2.1 the first test of the questionnaire 3.2.2 different c

22、ommunicative strategies adopted by the two genders 3.2.3 the second test of the questionnaire 3.3 the invalidity of the conventional implicatures 3.3.1 the individuality of the communicative intention 3.3.2 the invalidity of the interpretation of the conventional implicatureschapter 4 doubts about t

23、he operation of the horn scale 4.1 doubts about the process of inference 4.2 the criticism of xu shenghuans six rules 4.3 doubts about the over-detailed horn scale stipulationschapter 5 the interference from the politeness principlechapter 6 conclusionbibliographyappendicesiiiivvii144610101416161717

24、20222525293333353742454749chapter 1 introduction: about the horn scaleto begin this section, the writer of the paper wants to refer to a sort of jokes which appear like this:(1) a: “which month has 28 days?”b: “february.” a: “dont you think each month has 28 days?”the speaker a deliberately plays on

25、 the words to confuse b and he succeeds because of the way b interprets the utterance in question, i.e. b takes it for granted that a has provided as much information within his knowledge as he could and the information is necessary but not superfluous. therefore, when a puts forward the first quest

26、ion, b thereby interprets it as “which month has only 28 days and no more”, and then the answer certainly is “february”.bs reaction just coincides with paul grices understanding of “how people use language” (levinson, 2001: 101). according to grices theory, people will cooperate with each other in t

27、alk exchanges by holding a common goal in their mind, so the co-operative principle appears as an overarching assumption guiding conversations. he further gives four maxims under the principle, namely, the maxims of quantity, quality, relevance and manner. when both the production and interpretation

28、 of an utterance occur, linguists (laymen may not observe the maxims so professionally) can throw light on the processing effort by adopting the four maxims. on the other hand, this cooperation does not always happen on the superficial level, it may occur on a deeper level which is hard to detect at

29、 the first sight. taking (1) for example, suppose a is a cross-talker and b is a listener, then it is natural for b to expect some comedian effect from the dialogue between them. thus, b just lets a guide her through the conversation without any resistance, or in other words, she would not try to ca

30、lculate his hidden meaning, but cooperate with him by assuming his cooperation as well.the co-operative principle and its four maxims focus on the analysis of daily discourses, and invites non-linguistic knowledge or stereotypical relations to help interpret the implicatures of an utterance, hence b

31、roadens linguists and philosophers eyesight on the problem of implicatures, so in the 1980s, a series of theories was put forward, such as leechs politeness principle (1983), sperber and wilsons relevance theory (1986) and levinsons neo-gricean pragmatic apparatus (1991). though they all revise gric

32、es principle, they focus on different research subjects: leech attempts to explain why people flout the maxims; sperber and wilson adopt the cognitive perspective; and levinson has tried to introduce the principles into the anaphora research. it is levinson who has made full use of the horn scale.le

33、vinson discards grices maxim of relevance, but extends the maxim of quantity into what he calls generalized quantity implicatures, which later on constitutes his neo-gricean theory. there are two implicatures under the generalized quantity implicaturesscalar quantity implicatures and clausal quantit

34、y implicatures. by scalar implicatures, levinson refers to the horn scale (1972) as the basis for inference. horn scale is a linguistic scale, consisting of words which are comparable in terms of “informativeness” or “semantic strength”, such as hot, warm,all, some. it stipulates that choosing a wea

35、k form on the scale means the negation or ignorance of the strong one (levinson, 2001: 132). this idea entails saussures hypothesis that there are two kinds of relations within a linguistic state, viz. syntagmatic relations and associative relations. the former refers to the linear order of words pr

36、esence in an utterance or a sentence; and the latter refers to something like a memory repertoire within which words that share some common features are stored (saussure, 2001:121-122). thus, if the utterer says “it is warm.”, he/she implicates that “it is not hot” or at least “i dont know whether i

37、t can be described as hot or not” though the utterer does not mention the word “hot” or the strong form on the horn scale, we can still infer the word out of its absence, and this is a typical associative relation. on the other hand, if the utterer chooses a strong form on the horn scale instead of

38、a weak one, the implicature is that the weak form can not exhaust what the utterer wants to express, and that is why such a sentence as “it is warm, and actually it is hot” can often be heard. generally speaking, the horn scale indicates that within a certain associative relation, though those words

39、 share something in common, they differ in quantity, and this difference is exposed to be the numbers of lexemes contained in them. for instance, hot occupies the strong position simply because it can be analyzed as +warm, +higher noticeable temperature, so it entails warm, or in xu shenghuans expre

40、ssionhot = warm + higher noticeable temperature (徐盛桓, 1995:12-13). since the horn scale makes it plain that the preference to one word implies that its lexemes meet the utterers demand exactly, levinson draws upon it as the cornerstone of his quantity principle, intending to offer a relatively objec

41、tive explanation to the generalized quantity implicatures. it does work well. in bernard shaws drama “major barbara”, act i, we can find such a talk exchange between the mother and the son. (2) lady britomart: well, you must interfere now; for they are getting quite beyond me.stephen:troubled i have

42、 thought sometimes that perhaps i ought; (中國對外翻譯出版公司, 1999:10)here, the mother is compelling her son to shoulder his responsibility as a grown-up man, but her son is still dodging. the playwright bernard shaw allocated two words, viz. must and perhaps, on a horn scale must, perhaps, respectively to

43、the mother and the son to implicate different attitudes and charactersthe mother is strong-willed whereas the son is too weak to sustain her hope. lady britomart is also aware of her sons implicatures, so she goes on using “you must” repeatedly to give him encouragement.generally speaking, when peop

44、le use language, lexicons which contain more lexemes are chosen on the grounds that they can express more than those which contain fewer lexemes, and choosing strong terms shows the utterers confidence or strong will in achieving certain communicative goals. therefore the horn scale is an interpreta

45、tion of saussures idea of associative relations in terms of quantity. it is inspired by grices theory, but has been put in the spotlight by levinsons three principles.61chapter 2 a general survey of three viewpoints on the horn scalechapter 2 a general survey of three viewpoints on the horn scalethe

46、 paper mentions three viewpoints out of the consideration that the anglo-american linguists are used to taking a component view towards pragmatics, while on the contrary, the continental linguists tend to view pragmatics as a particular perspective on linguistics and this divergence, therefore, also

47、 affects these linguists evaluation of the validity of the horn scale. this paper will focus on one or two most outstanding figures belonging to each trend respectively, and in the third section, the focus will be shifted to the opinions of several chinese linguists to complete the survey work.2.1 t

48、he anglo-american linguists points of viewstephen c. levinson is the first linguist who successfully draws upon the horn scale to establish the neo-gricean principles, but his purpose is to apply the three principles to his study of anaphora, or specifically speaking, it is in his study of anaphora

49、that he pays attention to the horn scale and establishes his theory gradually. in his general pattern of anaphora, levinson actually expresses this idea: the more lexemes an anaphoric word obtains, the more specific its meaning will be, and then it will more likely disjoint the anaphoric reference (

50、徐盛桓, 1994:8-14). he attempts to arrange the reflexive pronoun himself and the pronoun him onto a horn scale as himself, him, because the former contains one more lexeme +reflexive than the latter does. then he goes on concluding that when him is chosen to substitute himself, the utterer tends to dis

51、joint the anaphoric reference. levinson further lists another two horn scales, viz. pronoun, (means zero anaphors), and np, reflexive pronoun. it is obvious that levinson trusts the horn scale with anaphora by reason of quantity decisiveness. quantity, however, can not be viewed as the only persuasi

52、ve or permeating force over anaphora; and that is why huang yan abandons the quantity-principle and the horn scale in his article “the syntax and pragmatics of anaphora: a study with special reference to chinese”, which is further supported by xu shenghuans paper mentioned above. to make matters wor

53、se, levinson even is criticized for abusing the horn scale by arranging pronouns, reflexive pronouns and np onto it. in xus paper, the three types of words have no comparability at all on the horn scale. it is pointed out that he even contains one more lexeme than himself when the two words both ref

54、er to the same target, and the horn scale thus appear as him, himself. what is more, xu argues that he can never locate an entailment between the two words, whose relationship is highlighted by the horn scale. as a result, levinsons attempt to apply the horn scale to the study of anaphora is in vain

55、.ralph fasold, in his book the sociolinguistics of language, also picks up the anglo-american standpoint generally. “pragmatics will be treated here, as it is in levinsons book, mostly according to the anglo-american tradition, although there will be a little discussion of the broader tradition” (fa

56、sold, 2000:119). he lists four logical operators and their language equivalents, namely, conjunction, disjunction, quantifiers and other scalar phenomena, conditionals and invited inferences. later, although fasold adopts grices solution: conversational implicature as the title of the next section, he focuses on the neo-gricean principles and turns to the politeness principle and invited inferences to complement the horn scale. to him, the horn scale justly provides strong evidence that daily discourses actually do not deviate from logic. i