Gradients, scales, clines and structural ambiguity

Olivier Simonin (1)

1 CRESEM - Centre de Recherche sur les Sociétés et Environnements en Méditerranées

This paper explores gradience, scales and clines in relation to linguistic categorization. It specifically addresses the problem of tokens belonging to two categories at the same time, introducting and discussing Aarts’ (2007) nition of intersective gradience in the process. In three case studies, it is shown that it is possible for tokens to pertain equally to two categories if (a) there is a structural ambiguity between two syntactic interpretations that amount to the same general meaning or when (b) one interpretation appears to be superimposed on another one.

Mots clés: gradient; scale; cline; ambiguity; category; generality; prototype; intersective gradience

Domaines: Linguistique

Olivier Simonin. Gradients, scales, clines and structural ambiguity. Viviane Arigne; Christiane Rocq-Migette. Metalinguistic Discourses, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp.137-156, 2015, 978-1-4438-7258-4. ⟨hal-01165121⟩