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

underlined by falling tone. The last occurrence of 'work' is nonselective (move ~A1

), as it is the repetion of the general sense. To summarize the taxonomy of the meanings of the noun work as understood in extract [1] I suggest the following distribution: Unspecific More Specific Specific WORK (general) r PAID NON-PAID' sccrctcrial work tcachcr's work doctor's work solicitor's work shop assistant's work voluntary work a housewife's jobs a husband's jobs Figure 1 The diagram is not to suggest that all the possible interpretations can be listed in an inventory, as implied by Wierzbicka (1987) and (1988). The meaning of the word is context specific, new interpretations can arise in conversations, and the above diagram is meant to allow for this. Although two maxims of Grice (1975) seem to have been violated in the discourse above, viz. the maxim of Quantity - make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purposes of the exchange as well as that of Manner - avoid obscurity -, there is no misunderstanding between the two speakers. The inference on the addressee, speaker A's part, is not a logico-semantic one: B's message is communicated by appealing to A's knowledge of the world which is supposed to exist as their common experience or shared knowledge. The response is a cue that it has been specified for the purposes of the exchange. The context-dependency of the interpretation of a polysemic word like work can be described in a formula as follows: X - XI + X2 + X3 + Xn, where X1=X + C1, X2 = X + C2, X3=X + C3, Xn = X + Cn 109