Semantic and pragmatic aspects of lexicography

Abstract

The purpose of the present thesis is a lexicographical account of Concessive Connectives, based on a combination of semantic, syntactic and pragmatic factors involved in their use, and consequently, in their interpretation. The scope of my analysis is restricted to Modern Greek concessive markers—analyzing extensively two of them: an ke (αν και) and ke na (και να). For the purposes of the present study, I have emphasised on connectives referred to in Grammars of the Modern Greek Language, delimiting at the same time the study to those concessive connectives that introduce subordinate clauses with an adverbial function in written discourse. Data for the present quantitative and qualitative study constitute approximately 300 bi-clausal concessive constructions in the Modern Greek language, drawn from written discourse from the Hellenic National Corpus (HNC)—a corpus of written Modern Greek texts compiled by the Institute for Language and Speech Processing. In the present thesis, I explore extensively the syntax and semantics of the above two concessive connectives in Modern Greek, namely of an ke (αν και) and ke na (και να), with respect also to their discourse function. However, I should clarify that pragmatic considerations are treated in this study neither as a starting point nor as an objective, but rather as integrated into a comprehensive linguistic treatment of a specific type of lexical units, namely connectives.Moreover, it is suggested that the tools used in my thesis may be applied to other apparently heterogeneous linguistic phenomena, since the framework applied allows generalisability. The framework I propose enables both lexicographers and dictionary users to view function words as active units in real discourse structures, rather than as mere lexical items of a static nature limited to a description of their role in potential utterances. At the same time, the aim of the present research is to produce some general statements based on observations about Modern Greek connectives and the structures they appear in, which can apply to the whole class of conjunctions, rather than merely to individual instances of the class of conjunctions. The current doctoral thesis aspires to have contributed to the field of linguistic and lexicographical knowledge in a number of ways. Firstly, it aims to add greatly to the examination and analysis of connectives as a language component in its own right. Secondly, it attempts to promote the methodology used in the field of lexicography towards meaning and/or function description through corpus investigation of language variation; and thirdly, it proposes a lexicographically plausible account of connectives that draws heavily on the theoretical model of Construction Grammar, where the author focuses on the rich linguistic insights offered by exploiting this approach for lexicographical purposes.