Is free enrichment always free? Revisiting ad hoc-concept construction

Is free enrichment always free? Revisiting ad hoc-concept construction Manuel Padilla Cruz Universidad de Sevilla, Departmento de Filología Inglesa (Lengua Inglesa), c/ Palos de la Frontera, s/n, Sevilla, 41004, Spain article info Article history: Keywords: Relevance theory Free enrichment Ad hoc concept Lexical pragmatics Linguistic triggers abstract In relevance-theoretic pragmatics, lexical adjustment, or ad hoc-concept construction, is considered a case of free pragmatic enrichment. It is hence included within the group of non-linguistically mandated processes that are automatically carried out during comprehension. Its output is an inferentially-specified representation of the conceptual content encoded, or activated, by open-class words like nouns, adjectives, verbs or adverbs. Ad hoc-concept construction is a necessary step to obtain a fully propositional, truthevaluable form that captures in a more precise manner the portion of meaning that the speaker communicates explicitly. However, this paper argues that this lexical pragmatic process needs not always be described as completely exempt from linguistic mandate: it may sometimes be enacted and steered by a series of linguistic elements. These fall within two categories: (i) the evaluative morphemes that some lexical items may receive in some languages, and (ii) lexical and phrasal items adjacent to content words. These elements would finetune the representations arising from content words as regards more specific, contextdependent features or shades. Moreover, they could add to such representations information about the speaker's attitude towards, or stance about, what the speakers refer to. Therefore, that information needs not always be derived as implicatures. ©2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). 1. Introduction Relevance-theoretic pragmatics portrays verbal comprehension as an intricate and incredibly fast process contingent on interpretative hypotheses about the content explicitly and implicitly communicated. Hypotheses about the former depend on various sub-conscious, almost automatic, non-sequential tasks. Linguistic decoding yields a logical form, or a minimally parsed and structured string of conceptual representations. Since this form is not yet fully propositional and truth-evaluable, it needs to undergo a series of pragmatic enrichments. They make up the process known as mutual parallel adjustment (Sperber and Wilson, 1986,1995;Carston, 2000,2002;Wilson and Sperber, 2002,2004). One of these enrichments is disambiguation of the possible senses of lexical items and sentential constituents. Other enrichments are linguistically mandated, as they are enacted by specific elements (Carston, 2000;Jary, 2016). The procedures, or processing instructions, which some of those elements encode even constrain their output in precise manners (Blakemore, 1987,1992,2002;Wilson and Sperber, 1993,2002,2004). Also termed saturation (Recanati, 1993,2002,2004), these enrichments include: E-mail address: [email protected]. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Pragmatics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2021.11.006 0378-2166/©2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). Journal of Pragmatics 187 (2022) 130e143 (i) Assigning reference to deictics, proper nouns and pro-forms like personal, anaphoric or cataphoric pronouns. (ii) Delimiting the time and duration of the actions alluded to by verbs. (iii) Completing semantically sub-propositional sentences (Carston, 2000,2002,2009;Carston and Hall, 2017;Hall, 2017). (iv) Establishing temporal or causal relations between the referred states of affairs. In contrast, other enrichments are non-linguistically mandated because they are automatically performed as a prerequisite to turn the logical form into a fully propositional form. Known as free enrichment, they include: (i) Supplying the unarticulated, or non-verbalised, constituents necessary to get a meaningful proposition, such as the location and/or time of an event, or the instrument with which an action is realised (Carston, 2000). 1 (ii) Constructing ad hoc concepts, or adjusted conceptual representations from open-class words like nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs. Relevance theorists acknowledge that the output of the latter type of free enrichment is often determined by the interaction of open-class words with co-occurring linguistic material, paralinguistic elements and contextual information (Carston, 2000,2010a,2010b;Wharton, 2009: Ch. 6). However, its portrayal as a cognitive process that is completely exempt from linguistic mandate should be revisited: the need for ad hoc-concept construction may be overtly indicated by certain types of linguistic elements that accompany, or are added to, content words. Unfortunately, the list of such elements has thus far been underexplored by relevance theorists. Furthermore, as regards co-occurring linguistic material, research from a relevance-theoretic perspective has not specified whether such material is only limited to other lexical items or could also include certain morphological elements and stylistic choices. Therefore, a typology also seems most needed, since such elements and choices can constrain the direction and output of ad hoc-concept construction in precise manners by prompting the addition of a wide array of beliefs. This involves admitting that ad hoc-concept construction is not always a totally free pragmatic enrichment process. This paper aims to show and discuss the variety of linguistic elements that may work as ostensive, intentional markers or signals indicating that ad hoc-concept construction is mandatory. Such elements will be argued not only to point to a need for specific conceptual adjustments, but even to direct them. Thus, this approach lends support to a conception of ad hoc-concept formation as an extremely context-sensitive process that operates on the grounds of a variety of stimuli. Furthermore, this approach stresses the complexity, heterogeneity and richness of the output of this process. Indeed, it may encompass varied information about a portion of the speaker's meaning other than specific features, properties or shades of what she refers to through content words: information concerning her attitudes and psychological states. 2 Lastly, this approach involves reconsidering the status of information that has often been claimed to be derived as implicatures. In fact, it contends that such information may be represented as a consequence of lexical pragmatic processes and may feature as part of conceptual entities provided two criteria are satisfied: such information must fulfiladefining function and contribute to identifying what the speaker actually denotes or refers to by means of a specific lexical item at a particular moment of speaking. The paper continues by offering some notes on ad hoc-concept construction and the two approaches to it. Next, it classifies, discusses and illustrates the list of linguistic elements triggering and guiding this pragmatic process. The illustration will be done mainly through examples from Spanish and English. To conclude, this paper offers some remarks on ad hocconcept construction and suggestions for future research. 2. Ad hoc-concept construction In relevance-theoretic pragmatics, lexical items are differentiated depending on whether they are endowed with a conceptual or a procedural semantics (Blakemore, 1987,1992,2002;Wilson and Sperber, 1993). Items with the former semantics are said to encode concepts. These are denotational mental entities comprising three types of entries (Sperber and Wilson, 1986,1995:88e89): a) Logical entry, which includes the defining properties of what the concept denotes. b) Lexical entry, which subsumes data about the natural-language word needed to verbalise it and its pronunciation. c) Encyclopaedic entry, which groups personal and/or cultural information about what it refers to. Relevance theorists initially endorsed the assumption that the concepts encoded by words belonging to open grammatical classes are not unalterable and do not enter inferential processes in a static manner. Rather, they are malleable and what they represent on particular occasions is amenable to context-sensitive specification (Barsalou, 1983). Accordingly, nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs just pack some sort of representational skeleton, or pro-concept, and procedures triggering the 1 In relevance-theoretic pragmatics, this enrichment is argued to not be determined by overt or covert indexicals, or empty constituent slots, in the logical form (Recanati, 1989;Stanley, 2000,2002;Szab o, 2011). 2 Following a relevance-theoretic convention, reference to the speaker is made through the third person singular feminine pronoun, while reference to the hearer through the masculine counterpart. M. Padilla Cruz Journal of Pragmatics 187 (2022) 130e143 131 finetuning of their denotation (Sperber and Wilson,1998;Wilson, 2011;Hall, 2017). In other words, concepts were thought to be fairly schematic and to need inferential adjustment. 3 Relevance theorists also distinguished two conceptual, or lexical, adjustments. On the one hand, broadening or loosening of the denotation towards a less specific notional space. This involves elimination of some defining property in a concept's logical entry (Carston, 2000,2002;Wilson and Carston, 2006,2007). In (1) below, the resulting concept FLAT *would be deprived of the requisite of absolute flatness, as the mentioned plateau does have hills and elevations: 4 (1) The Spanish central plateau is flat. On the other hand, narrowing or strengthening of the denotation towards a more restricted notional space. This involves turning idiosyncratic information in the encyclopaedic entry into a logical, defining characteristic. In (2) below, SING *may be specified as referring to singing a particular type of songs, singing alone or in a choir: (2) Peter likes singing. Both adjustments were posited to be contingent on the concepts encoded by other adjacent words and assumptions about the communicative situation and the speaker's intentions (Carston, 2002: 339; Hall, 2017: 93). Moreover, both adjustments were believed to not be mutually exclusive, but to be sometimes operated jointly, as when words are metaphorically used. Here, a defining property was considered to be dropped while some idiosyncratic characteristic was promoted to a definitional, almost quintessential one. To put it simply, conceptual adjustment consists of a rearrangement of stored information (Hall, 2017: 93). Its result was labelled ‘ad hoc concept’and was pictured as an occasion-specific mental representation. Ad hoc concepts were not seen as composite objects, but as atomic, monolithic, perhaps one-off, entities occupying a moment in an individual's cognitive activity. More recently, some relevance theorists deny that open-class words possess denotational content. They regard such words as conceptually underspecified, which enables them to communicate diverse meaning shades or nuances depending on context and available information (Carston, 2013a,b,2016;Wilson, 2016). 5 They treat such words as purely procedural elements that activatedor open, so to saydtemporary mental files, folders or labels amenable to housing diverse beliefs (Hall, 2017: 97). The amount, type and content of those beliefs will depend on other sentential material, paralanguage, available manifest information and general knowledge. In this view, ad hoc concepts are not the result of a mental task modulating already packaged raw denotational material, but specifically-created addresses in memory that connect with, or give access to, context-dependent information. Accordingly, the mental file CHEESE *that a hearer would create upon processing (3) below would store beliefs concerning a type or brand of cheese that the speaker enjoys, perhaps at room temperature, cut in cubes, very thinly sliced or accompanied with nuts, raisins or quince, while she has a glass of sherry and listens to one of Chopin's nocturns in her favourite armchair during a rainy autumn evening: (3) Oh, this is cheese! These beliefs may feature in a mental file as a consequence of the speaker's pitch, tone of voice, paused pace when speaking and facial expression of delight or satisfaction, as well as because of a paralinguistic element like the interjection, a sentential property like exclamatory syntax and a prosodic feature like the sentence stress falling upon the last word. Obviously, changes in paralanguage affect the content of such beliefs. Moreover, a mental file may also house beliefs about affective attitudes like love, dislike or scorn; emotions or feelings like happiness, sadness or irritation, or cognitive states such as (un)certainty, caution, scepticism, etc. (Padilla Cruz, In press a). Regardless of whether ad hoc concepts amount to adjusted conceptual material or mental files, some linguistic items seem to overtly indicate that their construction is called for. The role of such items would be to point the direction that conceptual adjustment should take or the sort of beliefs to be entertained and sent to a mental file. What follows classifies and exemplifies these varied elements. Yet, the list is not intended to be exhaustive, as its members are language-specific. It should therefore be understood as an open catalogue that may subsequently increase with elements from other languages fulfilling similar functions. 3. Linguistic triggers of ad hoc-concept construction The linguistic elements that may enact and contribute to ad hoc-concept construction fall into two categories. While the first one groups morphological elements like evaluative morphemes, the second one includes a variety of lexical and phrasal elements, as well as some stylistic choices. They will be referred to as ‘triggers’. 3 However, Carston (2013a) thinks that procedures to enact adjustments would be redundant. 4 Concepts are notated in small caps and ad hoc concepts with an asterisk. 5 This is the wrong format (Recanati, 2004)ormeaning eliminativist approach (Carston, 2013a). M. Padilla Cruz Journal of Pragmatics 187 (2022) 130e143 132 3.1. Morphological triggers Languages like Spanish, Italian, Modern Greek or Jordanian Arabic avail themselves of a wide variety of morphemes, among which feature the diminutive and the augmentative. Classified as derivational morphemes, they are highly productive and can be added to nouns, adjectives, adverbs and even verbs. The diminutive indicates appraisals about smallness, littleness or scarcity, whereas the augmentative expresses assessments about largeness or excessiveness. Hence, both morphemes are regarded as evaluative (Volek, 1987;Wierzbicka, 1991;Bosque, 2009). They are considered to change the denotation of the word to which they are attached in terms of size or amount. However, the diminutive and the augmentative serve other functions (Sifianou, 1992;Mendoza, 2005;G omez Torrego, 2002;Badarneh, 2010): (i) Making approximate or vague estimates: (4) a. Antonio se ha comprado un cochecito/cochazo. ‘Anthony has bought a car[þDIM]/[þAUG]’. b. C ordoba est acerquita de Sevilla ‘Cordoba is close[þDIM] to Seville’. (ii) Intensifying the quality or manner expressed by adjectives (5 a, b) and adverbs (5c): (5) a. María vino arregladita. ‘Mary came well-dressed[þDIM]’. b. Pedro est agrandull on. ‘Peter is big[þAUG]’. c. Anoche nos acostamos tardecillo. ‘Last night we went to bed late[þDIM]’ (iii) Denigrating the referent of nouns with a view to expressing pejoration: (6) a. Entr o en una tienducha y compr o un par de bebidas. ‘He popped into a shop[þDIM] and bought a couple of drinks’. b. Me intent o picar un pajarraco espantoso. ‘An atrocious bird[þAUG] attempted to bite me’. In friendly, close and laidback relationships, both morphemes may also be used to (iv) voice socially-beneficial attitudes and feelings like affection, endearment, admiration or surprise towards the hearer or something connected with him (Mendoza, 2005;N a~ nez Fern andez, 2006). Thus, both morphemes boost his positive face (Brown and Levinson, 1987) and maintain or enhance rapport (Spencer-Oatey, 2008). They suggest that the interlocutors belong to the same group whose members share similar viewpoints, experience similar feelings and/or hold similar attitudes: (7) a. Tu noviete es muy gracioso. ‘Your boyfriend[þDIM] is very funny’. b. ¡Vaya cochazo te has comprado! ‘What a car[þAUG] you have bought!’ Social proximity furthermore facilitates the use of both affixes in order to (v) suggest, assert or emphasise camaraderie. A (fairly) smooth, intimate, joking or playful relationship may even prompt their employment for mild insults as tokens of mock impoliteness (Mendoza, 2005;N a~ nez Fern andez, 2006): (8) ¡Qu ecabroncete/cabronazo eres! ‘What a bastard[þDIM]/[þAUG] you are!’ When face is not at stake, the diminutive and the augmentative may finally (vi) aggravate the offensiveness, abusiveness or aggressiveness of actions like insulting, offending or criticising: 6 (9) a. ¡Eres un co~ nazo! ‘You are a pain[þAUG] in the arse!’ b. ¡Vaya apartamentucho ha alquilado María para el verano! ‘What an apartment[þDIM] Mary has rented for the summer!’ Interpreting these morphemes certainly requires awareness of contextual factors such as the setting, preceding discourse, paralanguage and the interlocutors' identities, relationships, intentions, previous knowledge or ways of speaking (Würstle, 1992). The various functions that they may serve reveal that their semantics evades a unitary analysis and cannot be size- or amount-related notions. Clearly, in the examples above these affixes do not alter the meaning of the lexical items to which 6 Due to its association with smallness, the diminutive frequently suggests modesty, thus helping speakers avoid threats to their positive face. This association similarly enables it to soften the seriousness of requests, orders or offers, to name but some, thus facilitating the avoidance of threats to the hearers' negative face (Sifianou, 1992;Bosque, 2009;Badarneh, 2010;Albelda Marco and Cestero Mancera, 2011). M. Padilla Cruz Journal of Pragmatics 187 (2022) 130e143 133 they are attached in terms of littleness/largeness or low/high amount or degree. Both morphemes could be thought to encode some feature that enables them to specify the denotation of the term receiving them in a ‘non-serious’, perhaps non-literal manner (Dressler and Merlini Barbaresi, 2001). Although that feature would trigger more specific concepts, the resulting concepts need not always be ‘non-serious’or non-literal. Rather, they could be highly idiosyncratic, complex and contextsensitive (Padilla Cruz, 2020a). When the diminutive is attached to ‘coche’(‘car’) in (4a), the noun seems to allude to a modest, inexpensive or average sub-compact vehicle, probably lacking (many) extras, while attachment of the augmentative causes it to refer to the opposite type of car. In (4b) the diminutive makes the adverb ‘cerca’(‘close/nearby’) denote an unexpected or surprising closeness that will not involve much travel time. Similarly, in (5a) the diminutive conveys the idea that Mary came more dressed up than usual, than expected or than required for the occasion; in (5b) the augmentative suggests that the baby is well-built, big for his age or larger than other babies, and in (5c) the diminutive gives the impression that the speakers went to bed (much) later than usual. 7 In turn, in (6a) the diminutive helps the speaker communicate that the shop where she got some drinks was perhaps old, rundown, gloomy or seedy, whereas in (6b) it signals that she ascribes to the attacking bird any of a range of qualities like dangerousness, fierceness, wretchedness, hideousness, nastiness or despicability. In contrast, in (7a) the diminutive would hint at the speaker's love, admiration or affect towards the hearer's boyfriend, while in (7b) the augmentative would evidence the speaker's astonishment, admiration or surprise at the hearer's new car. Likewise, in (8) addition of either the diminutive or the augmentative makes manifest that the hearer is regarded as the type of sly, cunning, witty, mischievous, restless swindler that the speaker adores. Finally, the augmentative in (9a) unveils that the speaker considers the hearer an outstanding, despicable, annoying or irksome moron, while the diminutive in (9b) evinces the speaker's dislike, scorn, disgust or aversion towards the apartment in question. Following the initial relevance-theoretic approach, these two morphemes could be said to effect, and somehow steer, the adjustment of the concepts encoded by the nouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs to which they are attached. They somehow signal that beliefs pertaining to subjective or objective judgements, idiosyncratic properties or specific nuances of what those words denote, or even to the speaker's feelings, emotions or attitudes towards, or because of it need to be givenprominence in its conceptual representation. The result would be finetuned, more delimited and perhaps occasion-specific, mental objects on the grounds of such beliefs. Since these two morphemes would trigger and constrain conceptual modulation, they would be procedural elements (Padilla Cruz, 2020a,Padilla Cruz, In press a). They encode some content, but that content is not a stable concept or notion; it is computational and amounts to processing instructions yielding occasion-specific, context-sensitive and highly idiosyncratic conceptual representations. Even if temporarily, the diminutive and the augmentative raise (an) item(s) of encyclopaedic information concerning the speaker's views, opinions, standards, appraisals, feelings, emotions and/or attitudes towards the status of a defining property, while preserving information about other properties included in the logical entry of the concepts encoded by the words to which they are appended. Therefore, they guide conceptual narrowing in such a manner that specific characteristics, components, considerations, feelings, emotions and/or attitudes are brought to the fore, thus restricting the denotational potential of such words. In the more recent view, the semantics of the diminutive and the augmentative would also be considered procedural. However, it would contribute to the creation of purpose-built notional files, folders or addresses in memory. The type, content and amount of the beliefs to be harboured in them would be somehow determined by these morphemes. Accordingly, the file TIENDA* ( SHOP* ) resulting from the attachment of the diminutive in (6a) could store beliefs pertaining tothe characteristics of the shop in question, or the poor variety of bad-quality products it sold. Among the beliefs that an occasion-specific mental file or folder may house, there may feature beliefs about the speaker's feelings, emotions and/or attitudes towards what she refers. 8 The need for lexical pragmatic processes may be indicated, and their result constrained, by evaluative morphology. The diminutive and the augmentative may highlight certain beliefs concerning specific properties of what speakers refer to or the speakers’psychological states. In the classical relevance-theoretic approach, those beliefsdthough perhaps not salientdwould likely feature in the encyclopaedic entry and be shifted to the logical entry. In the more recent approach, they would be incorporated in a mental file. Since they occupy a place in the notional conglomerate activated by content words, where they play a delimiting role, and are brought to the fore by these affixes, they would not count as implicatures. The enactment of ad hoc-concept construction does not seem limited to morphological constituents of content words. A further group of linguistic elements may also trigger it. 3.2. Lexical and phrasal triggers The second group of linguistic elements indicating and steering ad hoc-concept construction gathers (i) lexical items occupying the determiner positiondarticles, demonstratives and possessivesdand (ii) prototypical qualifying adjectives, as 7 Access to encyclopaedic information about the speakers and/or cultural information about certain types of people or habits in a particular place could enable the hearer to infer the reasons why the speakers went to bed late: perhaps because they watched TV, chatted, drank a lot or partied, for example. 8 Clearly, these examples presuppose a neutral or positive intonation. The content of the beliefs to be stored in a conceptual file may certainly be affected by factors other than intonation: pitch, facial expressions or gestures. For more details about the impact of evaluative morphemes on lexical pragmatic processes, see Padilla Cruz (2020a). M. Padilla Cruz Journal of Pragmatics 187 (2022) 130e143 134 well as lexical and phrasal items fulfilling adjectival functionsdnouns, noun phrases and participles. Moreover, this group also includes the so-called (iii) expressive expletives and (iv) evidential participles, which, despite their resemblance, do not behave as prototypical adjectives. Lastly, (v) certain stylistic tactics, such as lexical repetition and rephrasing, also feature in this group. 3.2.1. Determiners Determiners accompany nouns and specify their reference. Central determiners precede nouns in languages like English or Spanish. They include articles, demonstratives and possessives (Greenbaum and Quirk, 1993). Traditionally, the definite article is claimed to situationally identify the nominal referent as unique, while the indefinite article indicates that it cannot be uniquely identified (Gundel et al., 1993). In relevance-theoretic pragmatics, both articles have recently been argued to contribute to lexical pragmatic processes (Scott, 2019). The indefinite article in (10) below, for instance, adjusts the concept LADY in such a way that it refers to an unknown woman. Or, alternatively, it causes the addition of beliefs concerning the fact that the lady is unknown to the speaker to the mental file that it generates: (10) There is an old lady standing at your office entrance. Demonstratives are usually portrayed as guiding the hearer to the intended referent by situating it in terms of proximity to, or distance from, the speaker and/or the hearer (Ariel, 1990;Reboul, 1997). They somehow signal the space where the hearer must search for it (Strauss, 2002). In relevance theory, they have been analysed in purely procedural terms: they encode procedures facilitating reference resolution when the intended referent cannot be uniquely identified in the discourse context (Powell,1998,2001). Such procedures indicate its spatial, temporal, emotional, mental or discourse proximity or distance to a deictic centre, as opposed to that of competing referents (Scott, 2009,2013,2019). Thus, demonstratives affect the derivation of explicit meaning. Demonstratives may be accompanied by overt or subtler clues of the speaker's signalling intention, like pointing gestures, gaze direction or directional nodding, and fulfil a truly demonstrative function. When such clues are missing, demonstratives work as indexicals. Nevertheless, if demonstratives assist referent identification by directing the hearer, they may somehow contribute to specifying the concept associated with it. In addition to the location of what it denotes, they would send assumptions about its characteristics to the logical entry of its associated concept. In the more recent account, such assumptions would find a place in the mental folder opened by the adjacent noun. When the intended referent is highly accessible, there may be no need to locate and/or identify it. Demonstratives have then been argued to generate distinct effects: suggesting the speaker's attitude towards, commitment to or involvement with what she alludes to. This is possible thanks to the contrast that they would implicitly set with alternative referents in the discourse context. Thus, if a proper name refers to an easily identifiable individual, the demonstrative focuses on just one conception of that individual and creates a contrast with other conceptions. It is this emphasis that would enable the speaker to communicate her attitude towards, or feelings about, that individual: (11) This Robin de Locksley is amazing! (adapted from Scott, 2009) Yet, such a contrast could not arise unless the activated concept was narrowed down: out of the possible features, properties, facets, aspects or shades connected with its denotation, a specific one, or a subset of them, needs to be selected as quintessential, even if only temporarily. Accordingly, the demonstrative in (11) would specify the concept alluding to the person in question in terms of a (series of) feature(s), such as his bravery, intrepidity, fairness, generosity or impartiality, which may be contextually salient or inferentially determined on the grounds of contextual information. Albeit momentarily, such (a) feature(s) would be given prominence and presented as definitional. Hence, R OBIN DE L OCKSLEY* would refer to a known person who is remarkable for his intrepidity, for example. But the concepts activated by the nouns with which demonstratives co-occur may be adjusted on the grounds of the speaker's feelings about and/or attitudes towards their referents. Consider, for instance, the sort of texts often accompanying some photograph postings on social networks: (12) a. These guys! b. Those magical days… If (12a) appears below a picture showing a gorgeous group of happy friends, arms on each other's shoulders, as they were having some beers, partying or in front of an attraction they visited, instead of fulfilling an identifying function, the demonstrative probably adjusts GUYS on the grounds of assumptions to the effect that the guys in question are very special to the poster, she loves or admires them. Likewise, if (12b) accompanies a portrait of a happy and loving mother with her two children in the countryside on a beautifully bright autumn day, the demonstrative could help specify that the charm of the alluded days stems from a (mix of) feeling(s) of togetherness, complicity, happiness, excitement, amusement or satisfaction. In the recent approach, the demonstratives would send beliefs about such feelings to a conceptual file. 9 Surely, the resulting concepts and the fact that the texts accompany visual postings might also give rise to a wide array of weak implicatures. In the 9 As a reviewer points out, the interaction of the poster's beliefs and attitudes with the images significantly affects the resulting ad hoc concept. If the group of guys in the former picture exhibited the trophy of a hunting weekend, and the poster was against that practice, GUYS* might subsume beliefs about her negative attitude towards them. Likewise, if the latter picture showed toys on the floor, peanut butter on the curtains and cracker crumbs all over the room, MAGICAL DAYS* might surely house beliefs about different attitudes and feelings of the poster. M. Padilla Cruz Journal of Pragmatics 187 (2022) 130e143 135 case of (12a) these could concern the poster's feelings of pride in people like these or elatedness with memories about them, while in that of (12b) such implicatures might regard her nostalgia or longing for those days. Lastly, possessives express some relationship between a nominal referent and any of the interlocutors. A similar argument could be extended to possessives. In some cases, they would modulate concepts in such a way that their referent is presented as owned by (a) particular individual(s), thus identifying the owner. In other cases, possessives may specify referents in such a way that they are related to the speaker or some other individual(s) in a different manner. Accordingly, the ad hoc concept resulting from (13) below would not allude to a roommate that is the property of the speaker, but to a person with whom she is sharing a room at a particular time: (13) My roommate is very funny and easy-going. Moreover, in some southern varieties of Spanish, as well as in Modern Greek, possessives may precede or follow proper names as a way of conveying overtones of social proximity, familiarity, endearment, affection, fondness or tenderness. In these cases, the possessive could cause the storage of assumptions concerning the speaker's feelings about the person she refers to within the mental folder activated by the proper name: (14) Mi Cristina es muy lista. ‘My Christine is very clever’. Along with determiners, nouns may be modified by adjectives or adjective phrases. These may also finetune conceptual representations. 3.2.2. Adjectives The conceptual semantics of some qualifying adjectivesde.g., ‘dead’,‘alive’, etc.dalludes to stable, non-gradable or atemporal states or properties that are not affected by the passage of time and may thus be either present or absent. That of other adjectivesde.g., ‘long’,‘fast’, etc.drefers to unidimensional, gradable or scalar properties like shape, length, taste, size, colour, etc., which vary in degree and are connected with an easily identifiable concept. While the former adjectives are considered stative, the latter are regarded as dynamic (Huddleston, 1988;Greenbaum and Quirk, 1993: 145; B€ orjars and Burridge, 2001;Cruse, 2011;Saeed, 2016). This rich semantics enables the meanings of adjectives to enter sense relations like synonymyde.g., ‘cheeky’/‘impudent’dcomplementarityde.g., ‘right’/‘wrong’dantonymyde.g., ‘noisy’/‘silent’dor conversenessde.g., ‘rich’/‘poor’dwhich are evidenced by different sorts of entailments (Griffiths, 2006). Moreover, many adjectives, like those of colours, may be included in taxonomies or hierarchical classification systems (Cruse, 2011;Saeed, 2016). Four features characterise adjectives (Greenbaum and Quirk, 1993: 129): a) Occurrence in attributive position as noun premodifiers. 10 b) Occurrence in predicative position as subject complements. c) Possibility of being intensified by adverbs like ‘very’or ‘highly’. d) Availability of comparative and superlative forms. The main function of adjectives is to modify the designation of the noun they accompany: while adjectives in attributive position tend to designate a relatively permanent property of its referent, those in predicative position are neutral as regards the temporariness or stability of the property of the nominal referent (Cruse, 2011). Thus, the information contributed by an adjective restricts the set of potential referents of the concept encoded by the noun they modify, so adjectives can also serve an identifying function (Scott, 2008). This restriction has been depicted in semantics as a process of intersection between both the set of all possible entities denoted by a noun and the set of entities amenable to having the property denoted by an adjective (Griffiths, 2006:37;Cruse, 2011: 313). Many combinations of adjectives and nouns are endocentric, as what they denote is of the same ontological type as what the noun alone denotes. Hence, the adjective merely constrains the applicability of the noun. But there are fully restrictive adjectives that limit the reference of the noun exclusively, particularly or chiefly(Greenbaum and Quirk, 1993: 143): (15) a. The only occasion. b. A certain person. c. The chief excuse. Other adjectives have heightening or lowering effects on the referent of the noun, so they can work as emphasisers (16a), amplifiers (16b) or downtoners (16c) (Greenbaum and Quirk, 1993: 142): (16) a. A true scholar. b. A complete victory. c. A slight effort. Still, other adjectives must be interpreted relative to some standard pertaining to the category to which the referent of the noun belongs. Therefore, the noun determines the precise interpretation of the adjective, while this also limits the applicability of the noun. These adjectives are known as relative descriptors (Cruse, 2011: 314): 10 Some adjectives are restricted to this position or occur predominantly in it and do not characterise the referent of the noun directly, as in “an old friend of mine”. M. Padilla Cruz Journal of Pragmatics 187 (2022) 130e143 136 (17) A large mouse. In contrast, other adjectives negate the referent of the noun and indicate where to look for the intended one. Hence, they are negational descriptors (Cruse, 2011: 314): 11 (18) a. A former President. b. An imitation fur coat. These possibilities suggest that adjectives could also modulate the denotation of the concept encoded by the noun they cooccur with. Thus, ‘true’in (16a) would cause SCHOLAR to designate a highly committed, hard-working, fruitful, insightful and inspiring researcher, while ‘former’in (18a) would make PRESIDENT simply denote a person who no longer has the presidency. In the more recent view, the adjective in (16a) would endow the conceptual file opened by ‘scholar’with assumptions concerning the characteristics and capacities of the scholar in question, while that in (18a) would place assumptions concerning the expiry of the term of office in the mental file created by ‘president’. Instead of the properties denoted by adjectives being individually represented in a logical form, adjectives would narrow the concept that the noun activates. The material packed in them, so to say, would be integrated in, or merged with, that encoded by the noun, thus enriching it. Accordingly, the prenominal adjective and adjectival noun phrase in (19) would not give rise to slots in the logical form to be filled by concepts like FABULOUS and FIVE - STAR . Rather, perhaps they delineate HOTEL as an astonishingly luxurious, top-quality, trendy lodging, probably with a private shopping gallery, an enormous swimming pool and incredibly well-equipped, elegantly-decorated rooms with spacious terraces facing unsurpassable views: (19) Last summer we stayed in a fabulous five-star hotel on the seafront. In the more recent account, that information would feature in an occasion-specific mental file. Similar effects could have elements with adjectival functions like nouns, noun phrases, present and past participles, and even defining and non-defining relative clauses. Likewise, other linguistic elements occurring in adnominal position without properly adjectival functions, namely expressive expletives and evidential participles, may flesh out concepts. 3.2.3. Expressive expletives Languages like English or Spanish also utilise seeming nouns and adjectival participles that appear to modify nouns or adjectives: ‘fucking’,‘damn(ed)’,‘bleeding’, etc. With a fairly elusive semantics, they do not behave as adjectives because they do not refer to qualities or conditions. Nevertheless, they resemble adverbs like ‘extremely’,‘incredibly’,‘surprisingly’or ‘shockingly’, and have heightening or intensifying values (Huddleston, 1988;Greenbaum and Quirk, 1993): (20) They served fucking/damn good nibbles at the reception. This elusiveness places them within the category of expletives and enables them to work as expressives (Potts, 2007). They can thus voice a wide variety of affective attitudes, feelings and emotional states ranging from shock, surprise, unexpectedness, puzzlement, pleasure, happiness, joy or euphoria, to irritation, annoyance or even wrath: (21) I forgot to return the fucking/damned book! In (21), the target of the affective attitude, feelings or emotional states that the speaker verbalises by means of the expressive expletive would be the referent of the head of the noun phrase working as the direct object, as the expletive immediately precedes it. However, the speaker might be interpreted to voice her attitude, feelings or emotions about the referent of another sentential constituent, namely the subject. For this interpretation to be possible, the expressive expletive would need to somehow ‘hop’towards the left in the sentential structure (Gutzmann, 2019;Bross, 2021). 12 Moreover, the speaker might be thought to express her attitude, feelings or emotions not about the referent of a particular sentential constituent, but about the state of affairs described in the utterance. This would require argument-extension and license a sentence-level interpretation (Gutzmann, 2019;Bross, 2021). 13 A pragmatic approach known as the speech-act hypothesis accounts for these possibilities by surmising that an expressive expletive can accomplish a quasi-independent speech act which conveys a not-at-issue content that is different from the content of the sentence where the expletive appears, which amounts to at-issue content (Frazier et al., 2015). This approach also postulates that, for the speaker's affective attitude, feelings or emotions to have been expressed about the referent of the subject constituent of a sentence, regardless of the position of the expletive within the sentence, the referent of this 11 Additionally, some adjectives may give rise to different readings, like ‘beautiful’in “a beautiful dancer”: a predictable reading can be that someone is a dancer and is beautiful, but another may refer to someone who dances beautifully. Other adjectives vary as regards the characterisation of the whole entity referred to by the noun or just a part of it, as in the case of ‘red’in “a red hat”di.e., the whole hat is reddor “a red book”di.e., only the cover is red (Cruse, 2011:314e315). 12 Gutzmann (2019) labels this syntactic movement argument hopping and this particular case left hopping. 13 Still, two further interpretative possibilities could arise when the sentence where an expressive expletive occurs is subordinated to a matrix clause, as in “Mary said that I forgot to return the fucking/damned book”. On the one hand, the attitude, feeling or emotion that the expletive expresses may be felt to have been voiced about the referent of the subject of the matrix clause. This yields a matrix-subject interpretation. On the other hand, that attitude, feeling or emotion could be perceived to have been expressed about the whole propositional content of the entire complex sentence, regardless of whether the expletive appears in the subordinated clause. This involves a matrix-clause interpretation (Bross, 2021). M. Padilla Cruz Journal of Pragmatics 187 (2022) 130e143 137 constituent needs to have agentive-causer nature. In other words, the subject must denote an individual who may be held responsible for the action described in the sentence. This is the so-called culprit hypothesis. 14 The speech-act hypothesis, however, has been seriously challenged from a syntactic perspective, which contends that expressive expletives can only have local interpretations. Interpreting that the speaker's attitude, feeling or emotion are expressed about the referent of a constituent other than the constituent next to which an expressive expletive is placed, or about the state of affairs described in the whole utterance, are illicit possibilities because the expletive carries an expressive feature (Gutzmann, 2019). This feature automatically triggers a local interpretation whenever the expressive expletive precedes a nominal head. For the referent of another syntactic constituent to be the target of the speaker's attitude, feeling or emotions, the expletive would need to be deprived of this feature, which would have to be assigned to the head of a determiner phrase in order to be subsequently eliminated. In turn, sentence-level interpretations are considered to not be syntactically motivated, but to originate solely as implicatures (Gutzmann, 2019: 107). Indeed, a sentence-level interpretation may be ruled out through the addition of an attitudinal adverbial that is semantically opposed to the expressive expletive appearing in a sentence: 15 (22) Fortunately, I forgot to return the fucking/damned book. Recent tests of the claims made by both the pragmatic and syntactic approaches about the distinct interpretations that utterances containing expressive expletives could receive have yielded inconclusive results, thus pointing to the need to consider the role of pragmatic factors and mechanisms in the interpretation of such utterances (Bross, 2021: 12). 16 Regardless of whether the presence of an expressive expletive maygive rise to a sentence-level interpretation, its attachment to a phrasal head could also be thought to effect and assist the lexical pragmatic process so far regarded as free enrichment. If open-class words possess denotational content, these expletives will adjust it. Accordingly, the adjustment in (20) would yield a narrowed concept referring to outstanding, extremely delicious, varied and sophisticated nibbles. If open-class words lacked that content, expressive expletives would help create a mental file and determine the amount and content of beliefs to be stored in it. Some beliefs might pertain to the speaker's attitudes, feelings and/or emotions. Thus, in (21) the expletive could cause the file BOOK* to carry assumptions about the speaker's scorn or disparaging attitude towards the book in question. In addition to the aforementioned syntactic criteria, the fact that such attitudes are held towards the book, and not towards the proposition expressed, is evident from: (i) The adnominal position of the expletive, which cannot appear in sentence-initial, -medial or-final positions, making up an independent tone unit in each case. These are positions where interjections or attitudinal adverbials, which do communicate the speaker's attitude towards a whole propositional content, may occur. (ii) Removal of the expletive does not alter the truth conditions of the proposition expressed, but eliminates information about the speaker's psychological state. (iii) In inflectional languages like Spanish, expressive expletives agree with the modified noun in terms of grammatical gender (23). When expressive expletives modify adjectives, their morphology resembles that of adverbs (24): 17 (23) a. Se me olvid o devolver el dichoso libro. b. Se me olvid o devolver los dichosos libros. ‘I forgot to return the fucking/damned book/s’ (24) En la recepci on sirvieron aperitivos jodidamente buenos. ‘They served fucking/damn good nibbles at the reception’ Along with pitch, intonation, facial expression and gestures, the expletive may nonetheless bring about a representation of the speaker's overall irritation because of her forgetfulness or any other negative emotion that she is thought to experience while speaking. That propositional-attitude representation does take the proposition expressed under its scope. 3.2.4. Evidential participles English and Spanish also possess some past participles which, unlike typical adjectives, do not denote permanent, inherent, temporary or accidental properties or states (Huddleston, 1988;Haegeman and Gu eron, 1999;Collins and Hollo, 2000;B€ orjars and Burridge, 2001). Rather, they indicate that a nominal referent should not be definitively alluded to by means of a particular term, as further evidence or more trustworthy information should confirm that the referent actually did something or can be regarded as a particular type of person or state of affairs. Examples are ‘alleged’,‘supposed’or ‘suspected’. They convey the speaker's epistemic stance about the adequacy of a linguistic label for that referent: uncertainty, scepticism, doubt, reservation, caution or reluctance to admit something about it. Therefore, such participles are evidential participles (Padilla Cruz, 2020b): 14 Both the speech-act and the culprit hypotheses were informed by the responses to a questionnaire administered to 48 undergraduate students (Frazier et al., 2015). 15 Gutzmann's (2019) view found support in the assessments made by 60 undergraduate students in a questionnaire. 16 For a discussion of some of the drawbacks of these approaches, see Padilla Cruz, In press a. 17 See Padilla Cruz, In press b for a more detailed account. M. Padilla Cruz Journal of Pragmatics 187 (2022) 130e143 138