Hedging arguments Article Swipe
YOU?
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· 2015
· Open Access
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· DOI: https://doi.org/10.3765/exabs.v0i0.3016
· OA: W4231833631
<p>Hedges such as loosely speaking and sorta indicate a mismatch between what is<br />said and what is actually meant. As demonstrated by the example in (1), sorta is often used when<br />a speaker doesn’t know a more appropriate word or phrase at the time of utterance (Anderson<br />2014).</p><p><br />(1) I was running on concrete and accidentally sorta kicked the ground – that is to say, I didn’t<br />really kick the ground, but it was like kicking the ground. (Anderson 2014:02, ex.2)</p><p><br />In this study, we investigated the readings that arise from sorta-hedging. We present results<br />indicating the possibility of hedging objects, verbs, and whole sentences, and we show that verb<br />type, definiteness of the object, and stress on sorta all influence the availability of an object hedge<br />reading.</p>
