대한언어학회 전자저널

Kang, Sang-gu. (2023). The role of alternative propositions in uses of English at least. The Linguistic Association of Korea Journal, 31(2), 63-79. In the literature, at least has been claimed to be responsible for not only focusing and invoking a pragmatic scale, but also requiring at least two propositional alternatives, one higher and the other lower on the pragmatic scale than the prejacent. This paper investigates the issue of whether both of the alternative propositions are necessary for felicitous uses of at least. In order to verify the presence of the alternative propositions in the context, we examine various discourse data sourced from movies. The findings suggest that the two alternative propositions are not equal in terms of their information status in the concessive use of at least. Specifically, the proposition lower on the pragmatic scale than the prejacent is consistently salient in the contexts of at least, but the proposition higher on the scale is not. The paper accordingly proposes to exclude the requirement of an alternative proposition to the prejacent higher on the pragmatic scale from the semantics of at least.

# alternative proposition # pragmatic scale # at least # presupposition # preference

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