Click here to listen to ‘Scoping out the scope of scope’
When you order a kebab and they ask you if you want everything on it, you might say yes. But you'd probably still be surprised if it came with say, chocolate, let alone a bicycle...even though chocolate and bicycles are technically part of "everything". That's because words like "everything" and "all" really mean something more like "everything typical in this situation". Or in linguistic terms, we say that their scope is ambiguous without context.
In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about how we can think about ambiguity of meaning in terms of scope. We talk about how humour often relies on scope ambiguity, such as a cake with "Happy Birthday in red text" written on it (quotation scope ambiguity) and the viral bench plaque "In Memory of Nicole Campbell, who never saw a dog and didn't smile" (negation scope ambiguity). We also talk about how linguists collect fun examples of ambiguity going about their everyday lives, how gesture and intonation allow us to disambiguate most of the time, and using several scopes in one sentence for double plus ambiguity fun.
Announcements:
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Here are the links mentioned in the episode:
'Shel Silverstein's hot dog and the domain of "everything"' post on Language Log
'New publication: Reported evidentiality in Tibeto-Burman languages' post on Superlinguo
'A few notes on negative clauses, polarity items, and scope'
'I didn't ask you to kill him' Learning English post on sentence stress and meaning
'I didn't ask you to kill him' sentence stress example in action by @dheanasaur on TikTok (⚠︎warning, loud sound)
'The Impulse to Gesture: Where Language, Minds, and Bodies Intersect' by Simon Harrison
'Caring for your baby since 1890' ambiguity post on All Things Linguistic
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Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com
Gretchen is on Bluesky as @GretchenMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.
Lauren is on Bluesky as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.
Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, and our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.
Here’s the link again to ‘Scoping out the scope of scope’
Thanks for listening, and stay Lingthusiastic!
Lauren & Gretchen