Linguistic Underspecificity: The Case of English Verbs

Abstract

The current paper focuses on the phenomenon of linguistic underspecificity found with selected English verbs from the television reality show Come Dine with Me. The theoretical part is introduced by two key approaches to human communication, which is followed by characterisation of a propositional form and explicit utterance content. The last part of the theory provides divergent accounts on word meaning. The analytic part consequently explores the ideas put forward in the theoretical part, especially the thesis of linguistic underspecificity, investigated with respect to selected verbs from the television show.