In this paper I will present and defend an analysis of (a sample of) the English modal auxiliary verbs using a relevance-theoretic semantic and pragmatic framework. I will start by discussing previous analyses of modality in English with an eye to explaining how a cluster of related meanings- epistemic, root, and other- is expressed by the same set of lexical items. I will then go on to develop a unitary semantic approach to the English toodais, treating them as (mostly) incomplete propositional operators. After defending the details of my semantic account, I will show how the proposed semantics can give rise to the range of root interpretations modal verbs can receive in context. Epistemic interpretations require some further theoretical machinery, which will make crucial use of the notion of metarepresentation. Finally, I will sketch the differences between natural-language interpretations of modal operators and their alethic/logical uses.

this paper were presented at City University of Hong Kong, the University of Melbourne, and the Australian National University. I would like to thank all those who participated in the discussions at those times, and I would also like to thank Sasha Aikenvald, Ruth Kempson, Steven Nicolle, Michael Pickering, Dan Sperber, and Elizabeth Traugott for sending me written comments. 2 and culture to be able to fill in the gaps in the perception of the utterance that are created by ambient noise. The inferential process becomes conscious when we are trying to understand an illegible word in a hand-written letter.

With grammaticalization theorists becoming increasingly aware of the relevance of constructions to their discipline, one of them even defining grammaticalization as the creation of new constructions, precisely the problem which construction grammarians engaging in diachronic research are addressing (or one they should be addressing be-cause to date the discipline has not really taken off), the question rises of whether grammaticalization theory could simply be turned into the historical branch of con-struction grammar, or whether diachronic construction grammar has its own raison d’être as a separate discipline. Since grammaticalization theoretical practice is fairly narrowly focused on the change of extant constructions along a path towards the grammatical end of the meaning continuum, there definitely is a need for a wider dis-cipline that also concerns itself with the primary emergence of constructions. Though grammaticalization presupposes ‘constructionalization’, the two developments need to be kept apart because not all constructions go on to grammaticalize. They have ap-parently been conflated, however, in two recent discussions of the evolution of argu-ment structure constructions (Schøsler 2003 and Trousdale 2005).

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Despite the crucial dependence of synchronic meaning on both historical and cognitive context, we have traditionally used different tools for capturing synchronic and diachronic generalizations in modeling a complex semantic category like the diminutive.

This paper argues that stylistically and pragmatically high-quality spoken language translation requires the transfer of pragmatic information at an abstract level of "utterance strategies". A new categorization of spoken language phenomena into essentially non-meaningful "speech errors", and purposeful "natural speech properties" is introduced, and the manner in which natural speech properties convey pragmatic information is described. Finally, an extension of the analogical speech translation approach is proposed that accounts for such higher-level pragmatic in- formation.

Recent work in historical semantics challenges traditional views of meaning-change as random and irregular, as opposed to the regular, lawlike character of sound change. In this paper, we argue that not only are there major parallels to be observed between regular behavior in semantic and phonological change, but further, these parallels seem to be motivated by a realistic model of psychological categorization processes which are common to the two domains.

1998) can be applied to lexical semantics. I discuss three instances of discourse semantics to show why an emergent view of semantics can provide a realistic account of semantics in discourse. The three cases are: 1) emergence and negotiation of meaning due to participant interaction in discourse; 2) (re)distribution of meanings among perceived synonymous lexical entities due to textual use and communicative demands; and 3) category shift of lexical entities as a result of frequent use in discourse. The results of these case studies are taken as evidence supporting the emergent semantics framework, namely: a) semantic meanings of lexical items and lexical combinations may emerge, be negotiated, and be acquired through language-use; b) meaning in isolation may be at variance with meaning in use; and c) it is indispensable to examine actual discourse practice to understand the nature of lexical semantics. Key words: lexical semantics, Emergent Grammar, meaning and discourse, discourse analysis, Mandarin lexicon 1. Introduction: Emergent Grammar and

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