Laurence Robert Horn (born 1945) is an American linguist. He is Professor Emeritus of

Linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

in the Department of Linguistics at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

with specialties in

pragmatics In linguistics and related fields, pragmatics is the study of how context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship between the interpreter and the int ...

and

semantics Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy Philosophy (f ...

. He received his doctorate in 1972 from UCLA and formerly served as Director of Undergraduate Studies, Director of Graduate Studies, and Chair of the Yale Department of Linguistics. In 2021, he served as President of the

Linguistic Society of America The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is a learned society for the field of linguistics. Founded in New York City in 1924, the LSA works to promote the scientific study of language. The society publishes three scholarly journals: ''Language'', ...

. Horn's primary research program lies in classical logic, lexical semantics, and neo- Gricean pragmatic theory. He mainly focused on the exploration of natural language negation and its relation to other operators. His work in pragmatics, in particular his innovation in the theory of

scalar implicature In pragmatics, scalar implicature, or quantity implicature, is an implicature that attributes an ''implicit'' meaning beyond the explicit or ''literal'' meaning of an utterance, and which suggests that the utterer had a reason for not using a more ...

, is widely influential. He is one of the group known as ''radical pragmaticists'' in the 1970s (along with Jerrold Sadock and others) and is a veteran of the

linguistics wars The linguistics wars were a protracted academic dispute inside American theoretical linguistics which took place mostly in the 1960s and 1970s, stemming from an intellectual falling-out between Noam Chomsky and some of his early colleagues and doct ...

over generative semantics. The

Horn scale In pragmatics, a subdiscipline of linguistics, an implicature is something the speaker suggests or implies with an utterance, even though it is not literally expressed. Implicatures can aid in communicating more efficiently than by explicitly sayi ...

s are named after him (a pragmatically determined scale over which Gricean generalized conversational

implicature In pragmatics, a subdiscipline of linguistics, an implicature is something the speaker suggests or implies with an utterance, even though it is not literally expressed. Implicatures can aid in communicating more efficiently than by explicitly sayi ...

s can be calculated). His 1989 book, ''A natural history of negation'', is widely considered to be a masterpiece; in it, he lays out all the major topics concerning negation since Aristotle, and touches on

negative polarity In linguistics, a polarity item is a lexical item that is associated with affirmation or negation. An affirmation is a positive polarity item, abbreviated PPI or AFF. A negation is a negative polarity item, abbreviated NPI or NEG. The linguistic ...

as well. Notable is his use of Aristotelian notions such as the Square of Oppositions, and syllogistic logic in a modern semantic/pragmatic setting.

Publications

* Horn, Laurence R., ''A Natural History of Negation'', 1989; 2nd edn. 2001. * Horn, Laurence R./ Ward, Gregory L., ''Handbook of Pragmatics'', 2004. * Kecskes, Istvan/ Horn, Laurence R., ''Explorations in Pragmatics'', 2007. * Horn, Laurence R., ''The Expression of Negation'', 2010.

Notes

External links

Laurence Horn's homepage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Horn, Laurence R. Yale University faculty Living people Linguists from the United States 1945 births University of California, Los Angeles alumni 20th-century linguists 21st-century linguists Linguistic Society of America presidents