earticle

영어

This paper aims to present how to interpret the strong and weak readings of the donkey pronoun in terms of a pragmatic view, something like the cooperative principle by Grice (1989), the Q- and R-principles by Horn (2004), and a conversational postulate by myself. This paper is discussed under some assumptions as follow: first of all, the donkey pronoun has no inherent semantic content, and it is not ambiguous like variables, but rather it has bound or free uses through pragmatic principles, something like ‘Zipfian economy’. Secondly, the Q- principle and R-principle by Horn (2004) are introduced as a tool to solve the two readings of donkey sentence, instead of those by Grice (1989). Thirdly, a conversational postulate is proposed to interpret the strong reading, without something as seen in a maximality presupposition by Chierchia (1995). It can be inferred that the strong reading be default from the donkey sentences and preferred, if without a special clue. In result, it can be also insisted that the potential readings of donkey sentences isn’t two but, in fact, three like (26). In addition, this paper shows that the hierarchy of the three readings of donkey sentences can be established like (15), due to Zipfian economy.