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    Zeugmatic infelicity can arise from pragmatic incongruity... — Carmelics
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    Challenges→The word 'light' is ambiguous (or polysemous) between 'not dark' and 'not heavy'

    Zeugmatic infelicity can arise from pragmatic incongruity between predications rather than semantic ambiguity in the predicate itself.

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    1 reason for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

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    Reason for
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    • 1.Zeugma like 'He lost his keys and his mind' feels awkward due to pragmatic clash (abstract vs. concrete loss), not semantic ambiguity in 'lost'.
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    • 2.Speakers can comprehend identical semantic meanings while finding predications pragmatically incongruous—suggesting these are distinct phenomena.
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    • 3.Contextual factors (salience, type-coherence, domain-mismatch) systematically predict zeugmatic infelicity independent of polysemy or ambiguity.
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    Reasons Against

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    Reason against
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    • 1.Pragmatic incongruity presupposes we've already isolated semantic meaning, but zeugma fundamentally disrupts that isolation in the first place.
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    • 2.Distinguishing 'semantic ambiguity' from 'pragmatic incongruity' requires a clear boundary that doesn't hold—pragmatics constrains semantic interpretation.
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    • 3.Most zeugmatic infelicity cases involve predicates with genuinely polysemous or context-dependent meanings, not mere contextual clash of fixed meanings.
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    Philosophy of Language1 linked

    Related

    Contextual factors (salience, type-coherence, domain-mismatch) systematically pr...Distinguishing 'semantic ambiguity' from 'pragmatic incongruity' requires a clea...Most zeugmatic infelicity cases involve predicates with genuinely polysemous or ...Pragmatic incongruity presupposes we've already isolated semantic meaning, but z...
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    Speakers can comprehend identical semantic meanings while finding predications p...The word 'light' is ambiguous (or polysemous) between 'not dark' and 'not heavy'Zeugma like 'He lost his keys and his mind' feels awkward due to pragmatic clash...

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