RT Journal Article
T1 Interpreting nominal tautologies: Dimensions of knowledge and genericity
A1 Escandell Vidal, María Victoria
A1 Vilinbakhova, Elena
AB Being always true by their very form, tautologies should be uninformative; however, they are felicitously used to evoke some sort of shared knowledge. In this paper we explore the varieties of knowledge speakers and hearers can resort to in interpreting nominal tautologies. Our examples show that different dimensions of knowledge (encyclopaedic vs. metalinguistic, normative vs. descriptive, and common vs. local) can combine in different ways in the interpretation of tautologies, and that these combinations fit in well with existing classifications of tautologies in the literature. Tautologies serve an argumentative function by invoking general knowledge as a means to justify a certain behaviour, but they also can have the opposite interpretation: when they are used as replies to informationseeking questions, they can only be interpreted as refusals.
PB Elsevier
SN 0378-2166
YR 2020
FD 2020
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/98617
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/98617
LA eng
NO Elena Vilinbakhova, Victoria Escandell-Vidal, Interpreting nominal tautologies: Dimensions of knowledge and genericity, Journal of Pragmatics, Volume 160, 2020, Pages 97-113, ISSN 0378-2166, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2020.01.014.
NO Russian Science Foundation
DS Docta Complutense
RD 7 abr 2025