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Books > Language & Literature > Language & linguistics > Semantics (meaning) > General
The papers in this volume address central issues in the study of Plurality and Quantification from three different perspectives: * Algebraic approaches to Plurals and Quantification * Distributivity and Collectivity: Theoretical Foundations * Distributivity and Collectivity: Empirical Investigations Algebraic approaches to the semantics of natural languages were in dependently introduced for the study of generalized quantification, pred ication, intensionality, mass terms and plurality. The most prominent modern advocate for an algebraic theory of plurality (and mass terms) is certainly Godehard Link. It is indicative of the Wirkungsgeschichte of Link's work that most of the contributions in this volume take the logic of plurals proposed by Godehard Link (Link 1983, 1987) as their foundation or, at the very least, as their point of reference. Link's own paper in this volume provides a concise summary of many of the central research issues that have engaged semanticists during the last decade. Link's paper also contains an extensive bibliography that provides an excellent resource for scholars interested in the semantics of plurals. Since we can refer readers to Link's paper for an excellent survey of the subject matter of this book, we will limit our attention in this in troduction to summarizing the individual contributions in this volume. The book is organized into three main sections; within each section the papers are ordered alphabetically. However, as in much of linguistic the orizing, there is an exception: for reasons pointed out above, Godehard Link's article appears as Chapter 1.
This book explores the relationship between conversation analysis and applied linguistics, demonstrating how the analysis of institutional talk can contribute to professional practice. With a foreword by Paul Drew, the core of the collection brings together researchers from a wide range of applied areas, dealing with topics such as language impairment and speech therapy, medical general practice, retailing, cross-cultural training, radio journalism, higher education and language teaching and learning.
This volume covers a broad spectrum of research into the role of events in grammar. It addresses event arguments and thematic argument structure, the role of events in verbal aspectual distinctions, events and the distinction between stage and individual level predicates, and the role of events in the analysis of plurality and scope relations. It is of interest to scholars and students of theoretical linguistics, philosophers of language, computational linguists, and computer scientists.
Based on an earlier edition published in 1992 in Bulgarian, this
book offers a specific approach to one of the most controversial
problems in linguistics. According to it, aspect is the result of a
subtle and complex interplay between the referents of verbs and
nouns in the sentence. Special attention is paid to the role nouns
and noun phrases play in the explication of aspect in English (and
similar languages). The grammatical marking of aspect is shown to
be a compensatory phenomenon imposed by language structure.
Comparisons made using Slavic (mainly Bulgarian) data reveal that
compositional aspect is a mirror image of verbal aspect. When
explicated compositionally, aspect is also determined by pragmatic
factors. Ultimately, it is part of man's cognitive potential.
The first comprehensive study of the narrative and stylistic characteristics of all of Marguerite Duras' major works. Through close textual readings with a particular focus on women's access to language, this book shows how Duras critiques and subverts dominant discourse. Duras' textual strategies are described within a discussion of narrativity which also addresses factors of race and class. Cohen demonstrates how Duras achieves the famous ritual atmosphere of her prose through precise techniques which connect to her critique of representation.
Drawing on ethnographic research inside and outside the classroom,
Janet Maybin investigates how 10-12 year-old children use talk and
literacy to construct knowledge about their social worlds and about
themselves, as they negotiate the transition from childhood into
adolescence. Through the analysis of examples of talk, she shows
how children use collaborative verbal strategies, stories of
personal experience and the reworked voices of others to
investigate the moral order and forge their own identities.
Bringing together a team of global experts, this is the first volume to focus on the ways in which meanings are ascribed to actions in social interaction. It builds on the research traditions of Conversation Analysis and Pragmatics, and highlights the role of interactional, social, linguistic, multimodal, and epistemic factors in the formation and ascription of action-meanings. It shows how inference and intention ascription are displayed and drawn upon by participants in social interaction. Each chapter reveals practices, processes, and uses of action ascription, based on the analysis of audio and video recordings from nine different languages. Action ascription is conceptualised in this volume as not merely a cognitive process, but a social action in its own right that is used for managing interactional concerns and guiding the subsequent course of social interaction. It will be essential reading for academic researchers and advanced students interested in the relationship between language, behaviour and social interaction.
This essay constitutes yet another approach to the fields of inquiry variously known as discourse analysis, discourse grammar, text grammar, functional 1 syntax, or text linguistics. An attempt is made to develop a fairly abstract unified theoretical frame work for the description of discourse which actually helps explain concrete facts of the discourse grammar of a naturallanguage.2 This plan is reflected in the division of the study into two parts. In the first part, a semiformal framework for describing conversational discourse is developed in some detail. In the second part, this framework is applied to the functional syntax of English. The relation of the discourse grammar of Part II to the descriptive frame work of Part I can be instructively compared to the relation of Tarskian semantics to model theory. Tarski's semantics defmes a concept of truth of a sentence in a model, an independently identified construct. Analogously, my rules of discourse grammar defme a concept of appropriateness of a sentence to a given context. The task of the first Part of the essay is to characterize the relevant notion of context. Although my original statement of the problem was linguistic - how to describe the meaning, or function, of certain aspects of word order and intonation - Part I is largely an application of various methods and results of philosophical logic. The justification of the interdisciplinary approach is the simplicity and naturalness of the eventual answers to specific linguistic problems in Part II."
TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS is a series of books that open new perspectives in our understanding of language. The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks, as well as studies that provide new insights by approaching language from an interdisciplinary perspective. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS publishes monographs and outstanding dissertations as well as edited volumes, which provide the opportunity to address controversial topics from different empirical and theoretical viewpoints. High quality standards are ensured through anonymous reviewing.
The only modern collection of speeches by southerners on the themes that have shaped the history and culture of the region, this anthology, which spans eighty tumultuous years of southern history, reflects the strategies of southern orators as they attempted to defend the indefensible, as well as those few who advocated a more compassionate South. Southern leaders were judged largely by their oratorical ability and their skills in defending the southern way of life. Accordingly, they placed much emphasis on developing consummate rhetorical skills. Thus, one can read the history of the region in the speeches of its politicians, ministers, and other public figures. Beginning in 1820 with the debates over the admission of Missouri to the Union, many southerners took a defensive posture against those forces from outside the region which they saw as threats to their culture. While the rhetoric of most southern leaders was clearly defensive, one must remember that they were dealing with the difficult issues of slavery; the relationship of federal and state government; their vision of the ideal society; the coming civil war and its aftermath; and living in a defeated, desolate, war-torn region. As demagogic, defensive, and archaic as they may seem today, these speakers developed and expanded patterns of thought and rhetorical strategy that echoed throughout the region. The collective memory that they created would shape their contemporaries and affect the lives of generations to follow.
The Extent of the Literal develops a strikingly new approach to metaphor and polysemy in their relation to the conceptual structure. In a straightforward narrative style, the author argues for a reconsideration of standard assumptions concerning the notion of literal meaning and its relation to conceptual structure. She draws on neurophysiological and psychological experimental data in support of a view in which polysemy belongs to the level of words but not to the level of concepts, and thus challenges some seminal work on metaphor and polysemy within cognitive linguistics, lexical semantics and analytical philosophy.
The book approaches the problems of writing, both fiction and non-fiction.
"Textual Metonymy" employs a theoretical framework combining
rhetoric, figurative theory and textlinguistics. In the process, a
very full historical account of treatments of metonymy from
classical traditions up to the present time is given and critiqued.
The author proposes a semiotic approach to the treatment of
metonymy, on the basis of which a textual model of metonymy as a
process of representation is developed to account for text cohesion
and text coherence.
Within linguistics, the formal and functional approaches each offer insight into what language might be and how it operates, but so far, there have been hardly any systematic attempts to integrate them into a single theory. This book explores the relationship between universal grammar - the theory that we have an innate mechanism for generating sentences - and iconicity - the resemblance between form and meaning in language. It offers a new theory of their interactions, 'UG-iconicity interface' (UG-I), which shows that not only do universal grammar and iconicity coexist, but in fact collaborate in intricate and predictable ways. The theory explains various recalcitrant cross-linguistic facts surrounding the serial verb constructions, coordination, semantically and categorically obscure 'linkers', the multiple grammatical aspects of the external argument, and non-canonical arguments. This groundbreaking work is essential reading for researchers and postgraduate students in linguistics, as well as scholars in psychology and cognitive science.
There are many ways in which we, as speakers, are creative in how we form and interpret new words. Working across the interfaces of psychology, linguistics, psycholinguistics, and sociolinguistics, this book presents cutting-edge interdisciplinary research, showing how we manipulate the range of linguistic tools at our disposal to create an infinite range of words and meanings. It provides both a theoretical account of creativity in word-formation and word-interpretation, and an experimental framework with the corresponding results obtained from more than seven hundred participants. Data drawn from this vast range of speakers shows how creativity varies across gender and age, and demonstrates the complexity of relationships between the examined variables. Pioneering in its scope, this volume will pave the way for a brand new area of research in the formation and interpretation of complex words.
The distinguished philosopher of language, Francois Recanati, has
proposed a wide-ranging truth-conditional model of pragmatics. In
this collection, various aspects of his theories are addressed by
distinguished contributors, and are then commented on or answered
by Recanati himself so that the reader is drawn into the central
debate within philosophy of language and cognitive science as to
what kind of pragmatics system is needed.
Linguistic signs do not coincide with intended or interpreted meanings. For relevance theory, this theoretical commonplace merely demonstrates the inferential nature of language. For Paul de Man, on the contrary, it suggested that language is unstable, random, arbitrary, mechanical, ironic and inhuman. This book seeks to show that relevance theory is a more plausible account of communication, cognition and literary interpretation than the deconstructionist theory de Man elaborated from readings of Rousseau, Hegel, and Nietzsche.
In this short monograph, John Horty explores the difficulties
presented for Gottlob Frege's semantic theory, as well as its
modern descendents, by the treatment of defined expressions.
Can postmodern accounts of the gaze--deriving from the psychoanalytic theories of Freud, Lacan, Fanon, and Riviere—tell us anything about those structures of vision prior to, and repressed by, modernity? Shakespeare's Visual Regime examines the tragedies, histories, and Roman plays for an emergent early modern spectatorial subject, thereby locating Shakespearean theater within those discourses most crucial to the contemporary exposition and disruption of regimes of vision: perspective painting, cartography, optics, geometry, Puritan anti-theatrical polemic, and the occult.
What explains variation in human language? How are linguistic and social factors related? How do we examine possible semantic differences between variants? These questions and many more are explored in this volume, which examines syntactic variables in a range of languages. It brings together a team of internationally acclaimed authors to provide perspectives on how and why syntax varies between and within speakers, focusing on explaining theoretical backgrounds and methods. The analyses presented are based on a range of languages, making it possible to address the questions from a cross-linguistic perspective. All chapters demonstrate rigorous quantitative analyses, which expose the conditioning factors in language change as well as offering important insights into community and individual grammars. It is essential reading for researchers and students with an interest in language variation and change, and the theoretical framework and methods applied in the study of how and why syntax varies.
This study looks to the work of Tarski's mentors Stanislaw Lesniewski and Tadeusz Kotarbinski, and reconsiders all of the major issues in Tarski scholarship in light of the conception of Intuitionistic Formalism developed: semantics, truth, paradox, logical consequence.
This book takes 'you', the reader, on board an interdisciplinary journey across genre, time and medium with the second-person pronoun. It offers a model of the various pragmatic functions and effects of 'you' according to different variables and linguistic parameters, cutting across a wide range of genres (ads, political slogans, tweets, news presentation, literary genres etc.), and bringing together print and digital texts under the same theoretical banner. Drawing on recent research into intersubjectivity in neuropsychology and socio-cognition, it delves into the relational and ethical processing at work in the reading of a second-person pronoun narrative. When 'you' takes on its more traditional deictic function of address, the author-reader channel can be opened in different ways, which is explored in examples taken from Fielding, Bronte, Orwell, Kincaid, Grimsley, Royle, Adichie, Bartlett, Auster, and even Spacey's 'creepy' 2018 YouTube video, ultimately foregrounding continuities and contrasts in the positioning of the audience.
Why is it that all interpretations are possible, and none is true? That some interpretations are just, but some are false? Lecercle draws on the resources of pragmatics, literary theory and the philosophy of language to propose a new theory of literary, but also of face to face, dialogue that charts the interaction between the five participants in the fields of dialogue and/or interpretation: author, reader, text, language and encyclopaedia. Interpretation is taken through its four stages, from glossing and enigma solving to translation and intervention. |
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