Modification and context

Abstract

Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) assumes a strict separation between representational and interpersonal meaning, which are captured in independent levels within the grammar, and utterance meaning, which arises in contexts of language use. This article argues that this division of labour is problematic for the treatment of modifiers in the noun phrase (non-subsective adjectives in particular), which induce semantic changes in the designation of the noun they modify. It is further claimed that the view of semantics in the model should pivot around a weak interpretation of the notion of compositionality, which allows the modulation of linguistic meaning in context in the dynamic construction of term structures. This is shown to be compatible with the basic tenets of functional linguistics that FDG endorses and very much in line with the contextualist tradition that treats linguistic expressions as propositionally underspecified units which can be truth-conditionally enriched in actual use. The article shows that only minor modifications are necessary in the model, which basically amount to increasing the functional role of the Contextualizer.

Keywords

• functional discourse grammar
• modification
• adjective
• subsective
• privative
• non-subsective