What is it about?
This article shows how words such as "idea", "duty" or "question", which are known in linguistics as "shell nouns", can refer to a portion of text which is not always clearly identifiable. The reasons for this vagueness are multiple and can range from the source text being scattered, to needing to be "trimmed" by the receiver of the message. This paper shows the link between so-called "shell nouns" and vague reference as well as the consequences of such vagueness by examining examples taken from contemporary French and Romanian.
Featured Image
Photo by Brooks Leibee on Unsplash
Why is it important?
This article tackles the question of shell nouns, which is a hot topic in the fields of semantics and syntax. However it does so by focussing on a "dead spot" of previous research on shell nouns, namely cases where the reference operated by the shell noun requires a greater cognitive effort from the part of the receiver of the message.
Perspectives
Writing this article was an opportunity for me to deepen my understanding of my main topic of research, i.e. shell nouns, by tackling it from a lesser studied angle. By exposing the atypical ways in which shell nouns like "idea", "duty" or "question" are used by writers / speakers, it allows for a better understanding of why these words are used, both in every-day speech and in more specialised texts. I hope that by focusing on the analysis of a few selected examples, this paper will bring to light a fascinating and multi-facetted linguistic phenomenon.
Anais Vajnovszki
Universiteit Gent
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Le flou référentiel dans l’attribution du contenu des noms
sous-spécifiés, Lingvisticae Investigationes, December 2024, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/li.00118.vaj.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
