Skip to main content
  • Book
  • © 2016

Irregular Negatives, Implicatures, and Idioms

Authors:

  • The first accurate description of the essential features of irregular negations which also identifies new members of the class
  • Offers a new, idiomatic theoretical foundation for ‘metalinguistic’ irregular negations
  • Deploys Davis’s ‘expression theory’ of meaning (2003, 2005) to account for a range of linguistic phenomena

Part of the book series: Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology (PEPRPHPS, volume 6)

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check for access.

Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xviii
  2. Irregular Negatives

    • Wayne A. Davis
    Pages 1-50
  3. Implicature

    • Wayne A. Davis
    Pages 51-84
  4. Irregular Negative Conventions

    • Wayne A. Davis
    Pages 85-138
  5. Implicature Theories

    • Wayne A. Davis
    Pages 139-176
  6. Pragmatic Explicature Theories

    • Wayne A. Davis
    Pages 177-208
  7. Free-Form Idiom Theory

    • Wayne A. Davis
    Pages 209-261
  8. Other Free-Form Idioms

    • Wayne A. Davis
    Pages 263-317

About this book

The author integrates, expands, and deepens his previous publications about irregular (or “metalinguistic”) negations.  A total of ten distinct negatives—several previously unclassified—are analyzed.  The logically irregular negations deny different implicatures of their root.  All are partially non-compositional but completely conventional.


The author argues that two of the irregular negative meanings are implicatures.  The others are semantically rather than pragmatically ambiguous.  Since their ambiguity is neither lexical nor structural, direct irregular negatives satisfy the standard definition of idioms as syntactically complex expressions whose meaning is non-compositional.  Unlike stereotypical idioms, idiomatic negatives lack fixed syntactic forms and are highly compositional.  The final chapter analyzes other “free form” idioms, including irregular interrogatives and comparatives, self-restricted verb phrases, numerical verb phrases, and transparent propositional attitude and speech act reports.



Authors and Affiliations

  • Georgetown University, Washington, USA

    Wayne A. Davis

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Irregular Negatives, Implicatures, and Idioms

  • Authors: Wayne A. Davis

  • Series Title: Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7546-5

  • Publisher: Springer Dordrecht

  • eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-94-017-7544-1Published: 26 April 2016

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-94-024-1376-2Published: 22 April 2018

  • eBook ISBN: 978-94-017-7546-5Published: 15 April 2016

  • Series ISSN: 2214-3807

  • Series E-ISSN: 2214-3815

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XVIII, 317

  • Number of Illustrations: 7 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: Semantics, Philosophy of Language

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access