Reinterpretation from a synchronic and diachronic point of view

Author: Markus Egg

Editor:

Frequently an utterance can only be understood if one integrates additional material into its meaning, which mediates between semantically conflicting parts of the utterance. This process is known as reinterpretation. From a synchronic viewpoint, it is a 'creative' or 'dynamic' aspect of natural language, 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 semantics. Analyzing reinterpretation will therefore also provide insights into mechanisms of linguistic change. The proposed account of reinterpretation goes as follows. Semantic construction yields ambiguous structures for reinterpretation cases, which are then monotonically enriched with information from extralinguistic sources (e.g. 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.