Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. Vol. 1. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 24)

Ágnes Deli: Meaning with lexical repetition

[1] B1 But the the the work itself is is work. Of course, But not acknowledged Al B2 ~A1 ~B2 ~A1 as work, because it is not paid. It's [e] very hard work. of course, 016A:554 If speaker B's utterance were an instance of pure lexical repetition, it would have no communicative import. But, obviously, this is not the case, as the addressee is able to interpret the statement and she gives reply to it. As a matter of fact, the utterance But the work istelfis is work can not be regarded an example of tautology. Levinson (1983) takes a radical pragmatic approach to the question of tautologies. Instead of interpreting sentences like ' War is war' in terms of their logical form, he refers to Grice's conversational maxims and pragmatic inference. Wierzbicka (1987), on the other hand, from a 'radical semantic' position argues for tautological patterns having distinct meanings. Among other things she maintains that the tautology LA husband is a husband' can have as many as four distinct semantic interpretations. In contrast, Fraser (1987) argues that "the very form of the sentence — a nominal tautology signals that the speaker intends to convey the belief that the participants share a view towards some aspect of the objects referenced by the sentence noun phrase, and wishes to bring this belief to the hearer's awareness" (1987:218). He also emphasizes that what this property intended by the speaker is, depends on the utterance context, and as a consequence much is left to the hearer's inference (cf. ibid.). McCarthy (1987) points out that in conversation a repeated lexical item may be used by the co-conversationalist with a slight shift of meaning, i.e. the meaning of a lexical item may arise in the course of renegotiation between the participants. Renegotiation is not the only source of meaning shift; polysemy is another cirsumstance for the inconsistencies of meaning with repeated lexical items. McCarthy's observation is also valid for the meanings of work in the above extract. 106