|
|
Vague meaning and its empirical modelling - the case of vague scalar modifiers in Czech
Ocelák, Radek ; Lehečková, Eva (advisor) ; Adam, Robert (referee)
This bachelor's thesis is concemed with the topic of linguistic (semantic) vagueness. In the beginning of the first, theoretica! part I define this phenomenon in contrast to other types of semantic indeterminacy (such as ambiguity or underspecification). Then I give a brief summary ofthe early 1970's works by Rosch, Lakoffand Labov, through which the Iinguistic vagueness has been established as a major theme in linguistics. After that, I ana1yze various aspects of the subject from several points of view: from the perspective of the prototype theory and its criticism (the categorization problem), (post)ana!ytical philosophy (relation of vagueness to meaning and structure), and forma1logic (problems of treating vagueness in exact tenns). The second, empirical part of the thesis deals with the semantics of a specific type of vague terms - the vague sca1ar modifiers in contemporary Czech (e. g. celkem, docela, velmi). I argue that there is a need for describing their semantics on an empirica1 basis, the introspective description not being satisfactOlY. I propose a method of exploiting large amounts of p1ain text in order to get enough empirica1 data for this kind of semantic description. Having applied this method, I present the technique and results of my own empirica1 research on semantic relations among 8...
|
guest ::
