implicational scalingLook what you’ve done now!
often functions as an expression of annoyance.
see also declarative sentence, interrogative sentenceimpersonal constructionn
a type of sentence in which there is no mention of who or what does or expe-
riences something. Examples include English It’s cold, It’s raining, and
French Ici on parle anglais(literally, “Here one speaks English”) “English
is spoken here”.
implicationn
in everyday communication, a great deal of information is implied by the
speaker rather than asserted. For example, if somebody said:
Rita was on time this morning.
it could imply that Rita was usually late.
Often the hearer would understand the implication of the utterance in
the way that the speaker intends (see utterance meaning) and give a
suitable response but, of course, there may be misunderstandings and
misinterpretations:
A:I’m rather short of cash at the moment.
(meaning: I’d like you to pay for the lunch)
B:Oh, I’m sure they accept credit cards here.
implicational scalingn
a method of showing relationships by means of an implicational table or
scalogram. For example, a group of students learning English may acquire
the rule for using the definite articlebefore the rule for the indefinite
articleand they may acquire those two rules before the rule for marking
the pluralof nouns. This can be shown by investigating their spoken or
written language and presenting the results in a table. The symbol [+] means
100% correct use of the rule and the symbol ¥means that the rule is applied
sometimes but not at other times (variable use).