This anthology brings together a diversity of readings in the philosophy of language from the ancient Greeks to contemporary analytic, feminist, and multicultural perspectives. The emphasis is on issues that have a direct bearing on concerns about knowledge, reality, meaning, and understanding. A general introduction and introductions to each group of readings identify both the continuities and differences in the way "big" questions in philosophy of language have been addressed by philosophers of different historical periods, institutional affiliations, races, and genders.

This lucid and wide-ranging volume constitutes a self-contained introduction to the elements and key issues of the philosophy of language. In particular, it focuses on the philosophical foundations of semantics, including the main challenges to and prospects for a truth conditional semantics.

Since the book is neither single-mindedly philosophical, nor single-mindedly technical, it is an accessible introduction to the philosophical foundations of semantics, and will provide the ideal basis for a first course in the philosophy of language and philosophical logic.

This comprehensive volume examines the relationship between revolutionary politics and the act of writing in modern South Asia. Its pages feature a diverse cast of characters: rebel poets and anxious legislators, party theoreticians and industrious archivists, nostalgic novelists, enterprising journalists and more. The authors interrogate the multiple forms and effects of revolutionary storytelling in politics and public life, questioning the easy distinction between 'words' and 'deeds' and considering the distinct consequences of writing itself. While acknowledging that the promise, fervour or threat of revolution is never reducible to the written word, this collection explores how manifestos, lyrics, legal documents, hagiographies and other constellations of words and sentences articulate, contest and enact revolutionary political practice in both colonial and post-colonial South Asia. Emphasising the potential of writing to incite, contain or reorient the present, this volume promises to provoke new conversations at the intersection of historiography, politics and literature in South Asia, urging scholars and activists to interrogate their own storytelling practices and the relationship of the contemporary moment to violent and contested pasts. This book was originally published as a special issue of South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies.

This book investigates the nature and properties of roots, the core elements of word meaning. In particular, chapters examine the interaction of roots with syntactic structure, and the role of their semantic and morpho-phonological properties in that interaction. Issues addressed in the book include the semantics and phonology of roots in isolation and in context; the categorial specification of roots; and the role of phases in word formation. Internationally recognized scholars approach these topics from a variety of theoretical backgrounds, drawing on data from languages including German, Hebrew, and Modern Greek. The book will be of interest to linguistics students and researchers of all theoretical persuasions from graduate level upwards.

This text discusses the philosophical views of Donald Davidson, an influential 20th-century philosopher. Since the 1960s Davidson's views have provoked and inspired and his intellectual dynamism has revolutionized the philosophy of mind, epistemology, philosophy of language and semantics. He is not only known for his rigorous and often controversial thinking but also by his willingness to engage in dialogue and re-evaluate his ideas and paradigms. The present collection is testimony to his spirit of openness and contains essays by academics on the major themes of Davidson's philosophy, complete with individual responses by the philosopher himself. The essays address the main ideas of Davidson's theory of language and epistemology with their implications in ontology and philosophy of mind. The book begins with polemical essays on the central problem of truth, one of the most controversial philosophical issues. The core of the controversy can be formulated in the question: is truth the goal of enquiry?;This query has recently been raised by Richard Rorty to whom Davidson has penned a personal reply. In the second part of the anthology, contributors discuss Davidson's semantic program

The studies of rhetoric and literature have been closely connected on the theoretical level ever since antiquity, and many great works of literature were written by men and women who were well versed in rhetoric. It is therefore well worth investigating exactly what these writers knew about rhetoric and how the practice of literary criticism has been enriched through rhetorical knowledge.
The essays reprinted here have been arranged chronologically, with two essays selected for each of six major periods: Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance (including Shakespeare), the 17th century, the 18th century, and the 19th and 20th centuries. Some are more theoretically oriented, whereas others become exercises in practical criticism. Some cover well-trod ground, whereas others turn to parts of the rhetorical tradition that are often overlooked.
Scholars in the field should benefit from having this material collected together and reprinted in one volume, but the essays included here will also be useful to graduate students and advanced undergraduates for course work and general reading. Students of rhetoric seeking to understand how the principles of their field extend into other forms of communication will find this volume of interest, as will students of literature seeking to refine their understanding of the various modes of literary criticism.

This book focuses on the linguistic representation of temporality in the verbal domain and its interaction with the syntax and semantics of verbs, arguments, and modifiers. Leading scholars explore the division of labour between syntax, compositional semantics, and lexical semantics in the encoding of event structure, encompassing event participants and the temporal properties associated with events. They examine the interface between event structure and the systems with which it interacts, including the interface between event structure and the syntactic realization of arguments and modifiers. Deploying a variety of frameworks and theoretical perspectives they consider central issues and questions in the field, among them whether argument-structure is specified in the lexical entries of verbs or syntactically constructed so that syntactic position determines thematic status; whether the hierarchical structure evidenced in argument structure find parallels in sign language; should the relation between members of an alternation pair, such as the causative-inchoative alternation, be understood lexically or derivationally; and the role of syntactic category in determining the configuration of argument structure.

During the last 10 years, more and more linguistic and psycholinguistic research has been devoted to the study of discourse and written texts. Much of this research deals with the markers that underline the connections and the breaks between clauses and sentences plus the use of these markers -- by adults and children -- in the production and comprehension of oral and written material. In this volume, major observations and theoretical views from both sides of the Atlantic are brought together to appeal to a wide range of linguists, psychologists, and speech therapists.
The volume presents contributions from researchers interested specifically in adult language and from others concerned with developmental aspects of language. Some contributors deal primarily with production, whereas others concentrate on comprehension. Some direct their attention to oral discourse while others focus on written texts. To preserve overall coherence, however, the contributors were given the following recommendations:
* With regard to the level of linguistic analysis, the emphasis should be on the clause level -- more particularly, on the relationships between clauses.
* Special emphasis should also be placed on linguistic markers (e.g., connectives, markers of segmentation, punctuation).
* An overview of a given field of research should be offered, and current research should be put into perspective.
* For contributors in the developmental field, attention should be paid to the fact that an account of the acquisition of some language functions throughout childhood should be included only if general principles of interclause relations that might be masked by the exclusive examination of adult evidence could be derived from it.

Historically, the social aspects of language use have been considered the domain of social psychology, while the underlying psycholinguistic mechanisms have been the purview of cognitive psychology. Recently, it has become increasingly clear that these two dimensions are highly interrelated: cognitive mechanisms underlying speech production and comprehension interact with social psychological factors, such as beliefs about one's interlocutors and politeness norms, and with the dynamics of the conversation itself, to produce shared meaning. This realization has led to an exciting body of research integrating the social and cognitive dimensions which has greatly increased our understanding of human language use.
Each chapter in this volume demonstrates how the theoretical approaches and research methods of social and cognitive psychology can be successfully interwoven to provide insight into one or more fundamental questions about the process of interpersonal communication. The topics under investigation include the nature and role of speaker intentions in the communicative process, the production and comprehension of indirect speech and figurative language, perspective-taking and conversational collaboration, and the relationships between language, cognition, culture, and social interaction. The book will be of interest to all those who study interpersonal language use: social and cognitive psychologists, theoretical and applied linguists, and communication researchers.

Historically, the social aspects of language use have been considered the domain of social psychology, while the underlying psycholinguistic mechanisms have been the purview of cognitive psychology. Recently, it has become increasingly clear that these two dimensions are highly interrelated: cognitive mechanisms underlying speech production and comprehension interact with social psychological factors, such as beliefs about one's interlocutors and politeness norms, and with the dynamics of the conversation itself, to produce shared meaning. This realization has led to an exciting body of research integrating the social and cognitive dimensions which has greatly increased our understanding of human language use.
Each chapter in this volume demonstrates how the theoretical approaches and research methods of social and cognitive psychology can be successfully interwoven to provide insight into one or more fundamental questions about the process of interpersonal communication. The topics under investigation include the nature and role of speaker intentions in the communicative process, the production and comprehension of indirect speech and figurative language, perspective-taking and conversational collaboration, and the relationships between language, cognition, culture, and social interaction. The book will be of interest to all those who study interpersonal language use: social and cognitive psychologists, theoretical and applied linguists, and communication researchers.

Published in 1998, this book argues that in recent decades, Anglo-American philosophy of language has been captivated by the idea that the key to progress in this area of philosophy lies in investigating the possibility of constructing a theory of meaning. This text provides an in-depth critique of the Davidsonian suggestion that Tarski's work on formal definitions of truth is an important element in allowing us to understand the form that the theory of meaning should take.

Logic has acquired a reputation for difficulty, perhaps because many of the approaches adopted have been more suitable for mathematicians than computer scientists. This book shows that the subject is not inherently difficult and that the connections between logic and declarative language are straightforward. Many exercises have been included in the hope that these will lead to a much greater confidence in manual proofs, therefore leading to a greater confidence in automated proofs.

Logic has acquired a reputation for difficulty, perhaps because many of the approaches adopted have been more suitable for mathematicians than computer scientists. This book shows that the subject is not inherently difficult and that the connections between logic and declarative language are straightforward. Many exercises have been included in the hope that these will lead to a much greater confidence in manual proofs, therefore leading to a greater confidence in automated proofs.

The last two decades have seen the development of a number of models that have proven particularly important in advancing understanding of message-production processes. Now it appears that a "second generation" of theories is emerging, one that reflects considerable conceptual advances over earlier models. "Message Production: Advances in Communication Theory" focuses on these new developments in theoretical approaches to verbal and nonverbal message production. The chapters reflect a number of characteristics and trends resident in these theories including:
* the nature and source of interaction goals;
* the impact of physiological factors on message behavior;
* the prominence accorded conceptions of goals and planning;
* attempts to apply models of intra-individual processes in illuminating inter-individual phenomena;
* treatments which involve hybrid intentional/design-stance approaches; and
* efforts to incorporate physiological constructs and to meld them with psychological and social terms.
The processes underlying the production of verbal and nonverbal behaviors are exceedingly complex, so much so that they resist the development of unified explanatory schemes. The alternative is the mosaic of emerging theories such as are represented in this book -- each approach according prominence to certain message-production phenomena while obscuring others, and providing a window on some portion of the processes that give rise to those phenomena while remaining mute about other processes. The amalgam of these disparate treatments, then, becomes the most intellectually compelling characterization of message-production processes.

The last two decades have seen the development of a number of models that have proven particularly important in advancing understanding of message-production processes. Now it appears that a "second generation" of theories is emerging, one that reflects considerable conceptual advances over earlier models. "Message Production: Advances in Communication Theory" focuses on these new developments in theoretical approaches to verbal and nonverbal message production. The chapters reflect a number of characteristics and trends resident in these theories including:
* the nature and source of interaction goals;
* the impact of physiological factors on message behavior;
* the prominence accorded conceptions of goals and planning;
* attempts to apply models of intra-individual processes in illuminating inter-individual phenomena;
* treatments which involve hybrid intentional/design-stance approaches; and
* efforts to incorporate physiological constructs and to meld them with psychological and social terms.
The processes underlying the production of verbal and nonverbal behaviors are exceedingly complex, so much so that they resist the development of unified explanatory schemes. The alternative is the mosaic of emerging theories such as are represented in this book -- each approach according prominence to certain message-production phenomena while obscuring others, and providing a window on some portion of the processes that give rise to those phenomena while remaining mute about other processes. The amalgam of these disparate treatments, then, becomes the most intellectually compelling characterization of message-production processes.

Fictional Discourse: A Radical Fictionalist Semantics combines the insight of linguistic and philosophical semantics with the study of fictional language. Its central idea is familiar to anyone exposed to the ways of narrative fiction, namely the notion of a fictional teller. Starting with premises having to do with fictional names such as 'Holmes' or 'Emma', Stefano Predelli develops Radical Fictionalism, a theory that is subsequently applied to central themes in the analysis of fiction. Among other things, he discusses the distinction between storyworlds and narrative peripheries, the relationships between homodiegetic and heterodiegetic narrative, narrative time, unreliability, and closure. The final chapters extend Radical Fictionalism to critical discourse, as Predelli introduces the ideas of critical and biased retelling, and pauses on the relationships between Radical Fictionalism and talk about literary characters.

This original and intriguing collection explores the pressures exerted upon language in the expression of romantic and sexual desire. Simultaneously, it reveals the ways in which language itself exerts its own constraints on the subject's capacity to express desire.
The contributors, while using the approaches and methods of empirical linguistics, engage directly with issues of relevance in gender studies and cultural studies. They examine and probe:
* language used to mediate romantic and sexual desire
* language used by the media to represent intimacy and desire
* attitudes and assumptions about romantic and sexual desire embodied in English
* implications for the construction of romantic and sexual identity

"The Vocabulary of Modern French" provides a lively and comprehensive overview of the vocabulary of contemporary French: its historical sources, formal organization and social and stylistic functions. The author examines both the relation between social and lexical change, and attempts to intervene in the development of the French language, as well as covering external influences on the language, word formation, semantic change, and style and register. Each chapter is concluded with notes for further reading and suggestions for project work, specifically designed to increase awareness of lexical phenomena, and enable the student-reader to use lexicographic databases of all kinds. A detailed index directs the reader to initial definitions of key concepts, and makes for ease of reference to recurring topics. "The Vocabulary of" "Modern French" will be a key text for all students of modern French.

Series Information:
LSE/Routledge

The idea that there once existed a language which perfectly and unambiguously expressed the essence of all possible things and concepts has occupied the minds of philosophers, theologians, mystics and others for at least two millennia. This is an investigation into the history of that idea and of its profound influence on European thought, culture and history.

From the early Dark Ages to the Renaissance it was widely believed that the language spoken in the Garden of Eden was just such a language, and that all current languages were its decadent descendants from the catastrophe of the Fall and at Babel. The recovery of that language would, for theologians, express the nature of divinity, for cabbalists allow access to hidden knowledge and power, and for philosophers reveal the nature of truth. Versions of these ideas remained current in the Enlightenment, and have recently received fresh impetus in attempts to create a natural language for artificial intelligence.

The story that Umberto Eco tells ranges widely from the writings of Augustine, Dante, Descartes and Rousseau, arcane treatises on cabbalism and magic, to the history of the study of language and its origins. He demonstrates the initimate relation between language and identity and describes, for example, how and why the Irish, English, Germans and Swedes - one of whom presented God talking in Swedish to Adam, who replied in Danish, while the serpent tempted Eve in French - have variously claimed their language as closest to the original. He also shows how the late eighteenth-century discovery of a proto-language (Indo-European) for the Aryan peoples was perverted to support notions of racial superiority.

To this subtle exposition of a history of extraordinary complexity, Umberto Eco links the associated history of the manner in which the sounds of language and concepts have been written and symbolized. Lucidly and wittily written, the book is, in sum, a" tour de force" of scholarly detection and cultural interpretation, providing a series of original perspectives on two thousand years of European History.

The paperback edition of this book is not available through Blackwell outside of North America.

The design arts -- from the design of buildings and machines to software and interfaces -- are associated with types of knowledge and performance thought to be structured, modular, and systematic. Such arts have become increasingly prestigious in our technocratic society. Since Aristotle, the art of rhetoric was conceived as a loosely structured "practical" art thought to be limited in the extent to which it could mimic more precise subject matters. The art of rhetoric has been controversial since classical times, but its status has sunk even lower since the industrial revolution -- a point when civic cultures began to cede authority and control to the cultures of specialized experts. Many sympathizers of rhetoric have resisted its decline by calling for a civic art of public discourse to stand in opposition to a technocratic specialized discourse that has come, increasingly, to disenfranchise the ordinary citizen.
This is the first book to question the rhetoric/technical knowledge split from a more fundamental perspective. To get some perspective on what is at stake in rhetoric's traditional classification as a "practical" art, the authors:
* explore the distinction between practical and design arts;
* enumerate the various criteria cited in the literature for qualifying a cluster of knowledge and performative skills to count as an art of design;
* show how the knowledge and performative skills associated with the art of rhetoric meet the major requirements of design knowledge;
* propose a general architecture of rhetorical design, one descriptive both of civic address and specialized academic argument;
* turn to the Lincoln/Douglas debates to embody and provide some empirical support and illustration for their architecture;
* demonstrate how Lincoln and Douglas can be thought of as expert designers whose rhetoric is highly structured and modular; and
* explain how the rhetoric of both rhetorical agents can be represented in the layers and modules that one needs to display plans for buildings, software, or other design artifacts.
These layers and modules are not just post hoc annotations of the debates; they also illuminate new and systematic ways for viewing the debates -- and by implication, other specimens of rhetoric -- in terms of strategies of artistic production. Kaufer and Butler conclude their presentation by citing some of the research and educational implications that follow from housing rhetoric within the family of design arts.

"Coalescent Argumentation" is based on the concept that arguments can function from agreement, rather than disagreement. To prove this idea, Gilbert first discusses how several components--emotional, visceral (physical) and kisceral (intuitive) are utilized in an argumentative setting by people everyday. These components, also characterized as "modes," are vital to argumentative communication because they affect both the argument and the resulting outcome.
In addition to the components/modes, this book also stresses the goals in argumentation as a means for understanding one's own and one's opposer's positions. Gilbert argues that by viewing positions as complex human events involving a variety of communicative modes, we are better able to find commonalities across positions, and, therefore, move from conflict to resolution. By focusing on agreement and shared goals in all modes, arguers can coalesce diverse positions and more easily distinguish between minor or unrelated differences and core disagreements. This permits much greater latitude for locating shared beliefs, values, and attitudes that will lead to conflict resolution.

"Coalescent Argumentation" is based on the concept that arguments can function from agreement, rather than disagreement. To prove this idea, Gilbert first discusses how several components--emotional, visceral (physical) and kisceral (intuitive) are utilized in an argumentative setting by people everyday. These components, also characterized as "modes," are vital to argumentative communication because they affect both the argument and the resulting outcome.
In addition to the components/modes, this book also stresses the goals in argumentation as a means for understanding one's own and one's opposer's positions. Gilbert argues that by viewing positions as complex human events involving a variety of communicative modes, we are better able to find commonalities across positions, and, therefore, move from conflict to resolution. By focusing on agreement and shared goals in all modes, arguers can coalesce diverse positions and more easily distinguish between minor or unrelated differences and core disagreements. This permits much greater latitude for locating shared beliefs, values, and attitudes that will lead to conflict resolution.

During the last 10 years, more and more linguistic and psycholinguistic research has been devoted to the study of discourse and written texts. Much of this research deals with the markers that underline the connections and the breaks between clauses and sentences plus the use of these markers -- by adults and children -- in the production and comprehension of oral and written material. In this volume, major observations and theoretical views from both sides of the Atlantic are brought together to appeal to a wide range of linguists, psychologists, and speech therapists.
The volume presents contributions from researchers interested specifically in adult language and from others concerned with developmental aspects of language. Some contributors deal primarily with production, whereas others concentrate on comprehension. Some direct their attention to oral discourse while others focus on written texts. To preserve overall coherence, however, the contributors were given the following recommendations:
* With regard to the level of linguistic analysis, the emphasis should be on the clause level -- more particularly, on the relationships between clauses.
* Special emphasis should also be placed on linguistic markers (e.g., connectives, markers of segmentation, punctuation).
* An overview of a given field of research should be offered, and current research should be put into perspective.
* For contributors in the developmental field, attention should be paid to the fact that an account of the acquisition of some language functions throughout childhood should be included only if general principles of interclause relations that might be masked by the exclusive examination of adult evidence could be derived from it.

These essays by A.W. Moore are all concerned with the business of representing how things are - its nature, its scope, and its limits. The essays in Part One deal with linguistic representation and discuss topics such as rules of representation and their nature, the sorites paradox, and the very distinction between sense and nonsense. Wittgenstein's work, both early and late, figures prominently. One thesis that surfaces at various points is that some things are beyond representation. The essays in Part Two deal with representation more generally and with the character of what is represented, and owe much to Bernard Williams's argument for the possibility of representation from no point of view. They touch more or less directly on the distinction between representation from a point of view and representation from no point of view-in some cases by exploring various consequences of Kant's belief that representation of how things are physically is always, eo ipso, representation from a point of view. One thesis that surfaces at various points is that nothing is beyond representation. Each of the essays in Part Three, which draw inspiration from the early work of Wittgenstein, indicate how the resulting tension between Parts One and Two is to be resolved: namely, by construing the first part as a thesis about states of knowledge or understanding, and the second part as a thesis about facts or truths.