Linguistische Berichte Heft 237

For more than twenty years Kent Bach and François Recanati have discussed their different conceptions of what is said. The aim of this paper is to compare their standpoints, particularly with regard to the aspects of conventionality, context-dependence and propositionality. It turns out that Bach's semantic conception of what is said seems to be the more compelling one because it copes with all communicative situations and does not depend on seemingly semantic intuitions which would undermine its 'objectivity'. At the same time, his semantic conception still upholds the traditional semantics-pragmatics distinction. Nonetheless, there remain problems like the distinction between implic-a-tures and implic-i-tures that challenge Bach's conception. Therefore, I suggest two criteria to differentiate between implicatures and expansions, respectively between implicatures and completions.

Diese Studie diskutiert anhand der deutschen Tempora einige der Vorschläge, wie der Kohäsionsgrad von Texten gemessen werden kann. Wir zeigen dabei, dass die bisher entworfenen Messinstrumente zur Erfassung des Kohäsionsgrads von Texten insofern problematisch sind, als sie Tempora nicht berücksichtigen können. Daher argumentieren wir für ein neuartiges Instrument zur Messung des Kohäsionsgrads von Texten, das auf der Segmented Discourse Representation Theory von Lascarides & Asher (2003) basiert.

The present study investigates German legal texts with regard to their comprehensibility, readability, and acceptance of gender-fair role nouns. In a multimethod study eye movements were recorded while participants (N = 45) read sections of law. The sections contained role nouns in (a) the generic masculine (e.g. die Arbeitnehmer [the employees]), or (b) an alternative, gender-fair version not formally marked for gender (e.g. die Arbeitnehmenden). Eye movements and mental representations evoked by the role nouns were analysed. Participants rated the legal texts' comprehensibility and specified which version they preferred. The results indicate that, irrespective of word length, gender-fair and generic masculine role nouns differ most notably in the early stages of the reading process: Though gender-fair role nouns at first required more processing effort, grammatical gender did not affect reading in later stages. In mental representations, the analyses of reaction times showed that legal texts with gender-unmarked role nouns correlated with a significantly stronger cognitive inclusion of women than texts with generic masculine terms. The mental category man was significantly faster available in response to generic masculine sections of law, whereas the category woman was more frequently accessed after gender-unmarked sections of law. Recipients were basically open for gender-unmarked role nouns, which they rated as more comprehensible and gender-fair than the generic masculine nouns.

Die folgenden Überlegungen widmen sich verschiedenen Ansätzen zur Behandlung versteckter Modalität bei infiniten Hauptsatzstrukturen. Dabei stehen zu-lose Infinitive im Zentrum. Im Rahmen der Theorie der ,,Transparenten Logischen Form“ (von Stechow 1993; 2004) wird eine formalisierte Version des Inferenzansatzes von Reis (1995; 2003) entwickelt, in dem pragmatische Anreicherung als Bindung einer Weltvariable per existentiellem Abschluss formulierbar ist. Es wird gezeigt, dass dieser Mechanismus nicht ohne weiteres auf interrogativische Hauptsatzinfinitive übertragbar ist. Dieselbe Schwierigkeit wird in einem zweiten Schritt an dem auf einem volitionalen Einstellungsoperator aufbauenden Illokutionsansatz von Truckenbrodt (2006a; 2006b) nachgewiesen. Der anschließende kurze Diskussionsteil bespricht Lesarten und Verwendungen von Hauptsatzinfinitiven, wobei performative Modalität, modale Kraft und konzessive sowie optativ-desiderative Sprechakte besonders berücksichtigt sind.