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Enough: A Lexical-Semantic Approach

Allan, K; (2019) Enough: A Lexical-Semantic Approach. In: Ingleby, M and Randalls, S, (eds.) Just Enough The History, Culture and Politics of Sufficiency. (pp. 13-25). Palgrave Macmillan: London, UK.

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Abstract

‘Enough’ is a fundamental concept that is as central to the lives of individuals as it is to political policies and debates about sustainability. Yet how much might be considered enough is highly subjective and rarely easy to determine. Uses of the word enough show it to be both polysemous and vague, with shifting, conflicting meanings that are modulated by context and collocation. While its core sense might be ‘as much or many as required’, it is often used negatively to imply ‘too much’ or ‘too little’. Following in the tradition of Raymond Williams’s Keywords, this short paper uses corpus data alongside other evidence to interrogate the grammatical, semantic and pragmatic complexities of enough, and explores its relationship with partial synonyms like sufficient and adequate.

Type: Book chapter
Title: Enough: A Lexical-Semantic Approach
ISBN: 1137562102
ISBN-13: 9781137562104
DOI: 10.1057/978-1-137-56210-4
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56210-4
Language: English
Additional information: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Dept of English Lang and Literature
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10073120
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