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Reinterpretation from a synchronic and a diachronic point of view
Author: Markus EggEditor: Regine Eckhart and Klaus von Heusinger
From a synchronic viewpoint, reinterpretation is a
`creative' or `dynamic' aspect of natural language, which is to be
described and integrated in a formal description of natural language
semantics. But reinterpretation phenomena can also be regarded as a
gateway for linguistic change, since they may get conventionalized and
thus enlarge the domain of compositional semnatics. Analyzing
reinterpretation will therefore also provide insights into mechanisms
of linguistic change. We propose the following account of
reinterpretation. Semantic construction yields ambiguous structures for
reinterpretation cases, which are then monotonically enriched with
information from extralinguistic sources (in particular, world
knowledge). Semantic ambiguities are described in the framework of
underspecification. This account of reinterpretation allows a
straightforward modelling of its synchronic and diachronic aspects.
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