Hostname: page-component-89b8bd64d-46n74 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-05-07T05:11:40.424Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Expressive Updates, Much?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Daniel Gutzmann  and
Robert Henderson
Daniel Gutzmann*
Affiliation:
University of Cologne
Robert Henderson*
Affiliation:
University of Arizona
*
[mail@danielgutzmann.com]
[rhenderson@email.arizona.edu]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article investigates a novel use of much in a construction that has not yet been recognized in the theoretical literature—as in Angry, much?—which we dub ‘expressive much’. Our primary proposal is that expressive much is a shunting operator in the sense of McCready 2010, which targets a gradable predicate and adds a speaker's evaluative attitude about the degree to which an individual stands out on the relevant scale. In particular, we argue that it does so in a way that allows it to perform an ‘expressive question’, which can be understood as a counterpart to a polar question, but in the expressive meaning dimension. In doing so, we present the first example of a shunting expression in English and provide, based on Gunlogson 2008, a new model of the discourse context that allows us to account for the different ways that expressive and nonexpressive content enters the common ground.

Keywords

expressivesdegree semanticsmuchrising intonationshunting expressionsmultidimensional semanticscommon-ground updates

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 95 , Issue 1 , March 2019 , pp. 107 - 135
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 Linguistic Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

*

For valuable discussion on previous iterations of this work, we thank the audiences at Sinn und Bedeutung 19 (2014, Göttingen) and the workshop ‘The Intonation and Meaning of (Non-)Canonical Questions across Languages’ (DGfS 2015, Leipzig) 19 at Göttingen, as well as all of the discussants at colloquia at Cologne, Frankfurt, Göttingen, Tübingen, and Tucson. For helpful comments along the way, we are thankful to Michael Adams, Heidi Harley, Elin McCready, Jessica Rett, Heide Zeijlstra, Ede Zimmermann, and, last but not least, David Turgay, who sparked our interest in this topic. Language associate editor Chris Kennedy was very supporting and had very helpful remarks, and three anonymous referees helped us settle on the final form of this paper.

References

Adams, Michael. 2003. Slayer slang: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer lexicon. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Amaral, Patricia, Roberts, Craige; and Smith, E. Allyn. 2007. Review of Potts 2005. Linguistics and Philosophy 30. 707-49. DOI: 10.1007/s10988-008-9025-2.Google Scholar
AnderBois, Scott, Brasoveanu, Adrian; and Henderson, Robert. 2013. At-issue proposals and appositive impositions in discourse. Journal of Semantics 32. 93–138. DOI: 10.1093/jos/fft014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Armstrong, Meghan, and Schwenter, Scott. 2011. X much? Constructions and the contextual licensing of scale inversion. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Pittsburgh, January 2011.Google Scholar
Barker, Chris, Bernardi, Raffaella; and Shan, Chung-chieh. 2010. Principles of interdimensional meaning interaction. Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 20. 109-21. DOI: 10.3765/salt.v20i0.2569.Google Scholar
Bierwisch, Manfred. 1989. The semantics of gradation. Dimensional adjectives: Grammatical structure and conceptual interpretation, ed. by Bierwisch, Manfred and Lang, Ewald, 71–261. Berlin: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biezma, Marıa, and Rawlins, Kyle. 2016. Or what?: Challenging the speaker. North East Linguistic Society (NELS) 46. 93–106.Google Scholar
Bresnan, Joan W. 1973. Syntax of the comparative clause construction in English. Linguistic Inquiry 4. 275–343. Online: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4177775.Google Scholar
Caponigro, Ivano, and Sprouse, Jon. 2007. Rhetorical questions as questions. Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 11. 121-33.Google Scholar
Corver, Norbert. 1997. Much-support as a last resort. Linguistic Inquiry 28. 119-64. Online: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4178967.Google Scholar
Cruse, David Alan. 1986. Lexical semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dodson, Steve. 2010. Much? Languagehat, December 8, 2010. Online: http://languagehat.com/much/.Google Scholar
Doetjes, Jenny S. 1997. Quantifiers and selection: On the distribution of quantifying expressions in French, Dutch and English. Leiden: University of Leiden dissertation.Google Scholar
Doetjes, Jenny S. 2007. Adverbs and quantification: Degrees versus frequency. Lingua 117. 685–720. DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2006.04.003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eckardt, Regine. 2014. Dear Ede! Semantics and pragmatics of vocatives. Approaches to meaning: Compositions, values, interpretation, ed. by Gutzmann, Daniel, Köpping, Jan, and Meier, Cécile, 223-49. Leiden: Brill. DOI: 10.1163/9789004279377_011.Google Scholar
Frazier, Lyn, Dillon, Brian; and Clifton, Charles. 2014. A note on interpreting damnexpressives: Transferring the blame. Language and Cognition 7. 291–304. DOI: 10.1017/langcog.2014.31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giorgolo, Gianluca, and Asudeh, Ash. 2011. Multidimensional semantics with unidimensional glue logic. Proceedings of the LFG11 Conference, 236-56. Online: http://web.stanford.edu/group/cslipublications/cslipublications/LFG/16/papers/lfg11giorgoloasudeh1.pdf.Google Scholar
Giorgolo, Gianluca, and Asudeh, Ash. 2012. 〈M,η,*〉: Monads for conventional implicatures. Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 16. 265-78. Online: http://mitwpl.mit.edu/open/sub16/Giorgolo.pdf.Google Scholar
Gunlogson, Christine. 2003. True to form: Rising and falling declaratives as questions in English. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gunlogson, Christine. 2008. A question of commitment. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 22. 101-36. DOI: 10.1075/bjl.22.06gun.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gutzmann, Daniel. 2011. Expressive modifiers & mixed expressives. Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics 8. 123-41. Online: http://www.cssp.cnrs.fr/eiss8/gutzmann-eiss8.pdf.Google Scholar
Gutzmann, Daniel. 2013. Expressives and beyond: An introduction to varieties of use-conditional meaning. Beyond expressives: Explorations in use-conditional meaning, ed. by Gutzmann, Daniel and Gärtner, Hans-Martin, 1–58. Leiden: Brill. DOI: 10.1163/9789004183988_002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gutzmann, Daniel. 2015. Use-conditional meaning: Studies in multidimensional semantics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198723820.001.0001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gutzmann, Daniel. 2019a. Dimensions of meaning. The Wiley Blackwell companion to semantics, ed. by Gutzmann, Daniel, Matthewson, Lisa, Meier, Cécile, Rullmann, Hotze, and Zimmermann, Ede. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, to appear.Google Scholar
Gutzmann, Daniel. 2019b. The grammar of expressivity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gutzmann, Daniel, and McCready, E.. 2016. Quantification with pejoratives. Pejoration (Linguistik aktuell/Linguistics today 228), ed. by Finkbeiner, Rita, Meibauer, Jörg, and Wiese, Heike, 75–102. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/la.228.04gut.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaplan, David. 1999. The meaning of ouch and oops: Explorations in the theory of meaning as use. Los Angeles: University of California, Los Angeles, ms. (2004 version.).Google Scholar
Kennedy, Christopher, and McNally, Louise. 2005. Scale structure, degree modification, and the semantics of gradable predicates. Language 81. 345-81. DOI: 10.1353/lan.2005.0071.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koev, Todor. 2013. Apposition and the structure of discourse. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University dissertation.Google Scholar
Kratzer, Angelika. 2004. Interpreting focus: Presupposed or expressive meanings? A comment on Geurt and van der Sandt. Theoretical Linguistics 30. 123-36. DOI: 10.1515/thli.2004.002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kubota, Yusuke, and Uegaki, Wataru. 2011. Continuation-based semantics for conventional implicatures: The case of Japanese benefactives. Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 19. 306-23. DOI: 10.3765/salt.v19i0.2522.Google Scholar
Lasersohn, Peter. 2005. Context dependence, disagreement, and predicates of personal taste. Linguistics and Philosophy 28. 643-86. DOI: 10.1007/s10988-005-0596-x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liberman, Mark. 2010. X much. Language Log, December 10, 2010. Online: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2836.Google Scholar
Liu, Mingya. 2012. Multidimensional semantics of evaluative adverbs. (Current research in the semantics/pragmatics interface 26.) Leiden: Brill. DOI: 10.1163/9789004248496.Google Scholar
Malamud, Sophia A., and Stephenson, Tamina. 2015. Three ways to avoid commitments: Declarative force modifiers in the conversational scoreboard. Journal of Semantics 32. 275–311. DOI: 10.1093/jos/ffu002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCready, E. 2010. Varieties of conventional implicature. Semantics and Pragmatics 3:8. DOI: 10.3765/sp.3.8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCready, E., and Takahashi, Yohei. 2013. Good reasons. Beyond expressives: Explorations in use-conditional meaning, ed. by Gutzmann, Daniel and Gärtner, Hans-Martin, 201-29. Leiden: Brill. DOI: 10.1163/9789004183988_007.Google Scholar
Millard, Josh. 2010. Datawank much? MetaTalk, December 8, 2010. Online: https://metatalk.metafilter.com/20088/Datawank-much.Google Scholar
Nouwen, Rick. 2007. On appositives and dynamic binding. Research on Language and Computation 5. 87–102. DOI: 10.1007/s11168-006-9019-6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Portner, Paul. 2007. Instructions for interpretation as separate performatives. On information structure, meaning and form, ed. by Schwabe, Kerstin and Winkler, Susanne, 407-25. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/la.100.22por.Google Scholar
Potts, Christopher. 2005. The logic of conventional implicature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Potts, Christopher. 2007. The expressive dimension. Theoretical Linguistics 33. 165-97. DOI: 10.1515/TL.2007.011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Potts, Christopher, and Kawahara, Shigeto. 2004. Japanese honorifics as emotive definite descriptions. Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 14. 235-54. DOI: 10.3765/salt.v14i0.2917.Google Scholar
Predelli, Stefano. 2008. Vocatives. Analysis 68. 97–105. DOI: 10.1093/analys/68.2.97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Predelli, Stefano. 2013. Meaning without truth. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199695638.001.0001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rett, Jessica. 2008a. A degree account of exclamatives. Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 18. 601-8. DOI: 10.3765/salt.v18i0.2470.Google Scholar
Rett, Jessica. 2008b. Degree modification in natural language. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University dissertation.Google Scholar
Rett, Jessica. 2014. The polysemy of measurement. Lingua 143. 242-66. DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2014.02.001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rett, Jessica. 2018. The semantics of many, much, few, and little. Language and Linguistics Compass 12:e12269. DOI: 10.1111/lnc3.12269.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sadock, Jerrold M. 1971. Queclaratives. Chicago Linguistic Society 7. 223-32.Google Scholar
Schlenker, Philippe. 2010. Supplements within a unidimensional semantics I: Scope. Logic, language, and meaning: 17th Amsterdam Colloquium revised selected papers, ed. by Aloni, Maria, Bastiaanse, Harald, Jager, Tikitu de, and Schulz, Katrin, 74–83. Berlin: Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-14287-1_8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shan, Chung-chieh. 2001. Monads for natural language semantics. Proceedings of the ESSLLI-2001 student session, ed. by Striegnitz, Kristina, 285-98.Google Scholar
Solt, Stephanie. 2010. Much support and more. Logic, language, and meaning: 17th Amsterdam Colloquium revised selected papers, ed. by Aloni, Maria, Bastiaanse, Harald, Jager, Tikitu de, and Schulz, Katrin, 446-55. Berlin: Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-14287-1_45.Google Scholar
Solt, Stephanie. 2015. Q-adjectives and the semantics of quantity. Journal of Semantics 32. 221-73. DOI: 10.1093/jos/fft018.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sullivan, Kevin. 2010. Buffy (and SNL) ‘much’ much?: Slang research with Hulu.com, Part 2. Language and Humor, June 8, 2010. Online: http://languageandhumor.com/blog/2008/06/buffy-and-snl-much-much-slang-research-with-hulu-com-part-2/.Google Scholar
Syrett, Kristen, and Koev, Todor. 2015. Experimental evidence for the truth conditional contribution and shifting information status of appositives. Journal of Semantics 32. 525-77. DOI: 10.1093/jos/ffu007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Gutzmann and Henderson supplementary material

Gutzmann and Henderson supplementary material
Download Gutzmann and Henderson supplementary material(File)
File 4.8 MB