This handbook presents an overview of the phenomenon of reference - the ability to refer to and pick out entities - which is an essential part of human language and cognition. In the volume's 21 chapters, international experts in the field offer a critical account of all aspects of reference from a range of theoretical perspectives. Chapters in the first part of the book are concerned with basic questions related to different types of referring expression and their interpretation. They address questions about the role of the speaker - including speaker intentions - and of the addressee, as well as the role played by the semantics of the linguistic forms themselves in establishing reference. This part also explores the nature of such concepts as definite and indefinite reference and specificity, and the conditions under which reference may fail. The second part of the volume looks at implications and applications, with chapters covering such topics as the acquisition of reference by children, the processing of reference both in the human brain and by machines. The volume will be of interest to linguists in a wide range of subfields, including semantics, pragmatics, computational linguistics, and psycho- and neurolinguistics, as well as scholars in related fields such as philosophy and computer science.

This book is a cross-linguistic examination of the different grammatical means languages employ to represent a general set of semantic relations between clauses. The investigations focus on ways of combining clauses other than through relative and complement clause constructions. These span a number of types of semantic linking. Three, for example, describe varieties of consequence - cause, result, and purpose - which may be illustrated in English by, respectively: Because John has been studying German for years, he speaks it well; John has been studying German for years, thus he speaksit well; and John has been studying German for years, in order that he should speak it well. Syntactic descriptions of languages provide a grammatical analysis of clause types. The chapters in this book add the further dimension of semantics, generally in the form of focal and supporting clauses, the former referring to the central activity or state of the biclausal linking; and the latter to the clause attached to it. The supporting clause may set out the temporal milieu for the focal clause or specify a condition or presupposition for it or a preliminary statement of it, as in AlthoughJohn has been studying German for years (the supporting clause), he does not speak it well (the focal clause). Professor Dixon's extensive opening discussion is followed by fourteen case studies of languages ranging from Korean and Kham to Iquito and Ojibwe. The book's concluding synthesis is provided by Professor Aikhenvald.

The question of how to determine the meaning of compounds was prominent in early generative morphology, but lost importance after the late 1970s. In the past decade, it has been revived by the emergence of a number of frameworks that are better suited to studying this question than earlier ones. In this book, three frameworks for studying the semantics of compounding are presented by their initiators: Jackendoff's Parallel Architecture, Lieber's theory of lexical semantics, and Stekauer's onomasiological theory. Common to these presentations is a focus on English noun-noun compounds. In the following chapters, these theories are then applied to different types of compounding (phrasal, A+N, neoclassical) and other languages (French, German, Swedish, Greek). Finally, a comparison highlights how each framework offers particular insight into the meaning of compounds. An exciting new contribution to the field, this book will be of interest to morphologists, semanticists and cognitive linguists.

An exploration of English pragmatics with a thorough integration of theoretical and experimental research A central goal of pragmatics is to identify the capabilities that underpin our ability to communicate 'non-literal' meanings. Guiding students through the many facets of English pragmatics, this textbook discusses the ways in which people successfully convey and recover meanings that are not simply associated with the combinations of words that they use. The book draws on a broad range of data, including psycholinguistic experimentation, studies of acquisition and corpus research, and uses real examples from English to illuminate contemporary debates in pragmatics and related fields. With exercises and discussion topics at the end of each chapter, it invites students to explore how pragmatic meaning can be explained in theoretical terms and contemplate whether these explanations command empirical support.

This stimulating volume provides fresh perspectives on choice, a key notion in systemic functional linguistics. Bringing together a global team of well-established and up-and-coming systemic functional linguists, it shows how the different senses of choice as process and as product are interdependent, and how they operate at all levels of language. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, it covers a range of linguistic viewpoints, informed by evolutionary theory, psychology, sociology and neuroscience, to produce a complex but unifying account of the issues. This book offers a critical examination of choice and is ideal for students and researchers working in all areas of functional linguistics as well as cognitive linguistics, second-language acquisition, neurolinguistics and sociolinguistics.

This book reimagines the compositional semantics of comparative sentences using words such as more, as, too, and others. The book's central thesis entails a rejection of a fundamental assumption of degree semantic frameworks: that gradable adjectives like tall lexicalize functions from individuals to degrees, i.e., measure functions. Alexis Wellwood argues that comparative expressions in English themselves introducemeasure functions; this is the case whether that morphology targets adjectives, as intaller or more intelligent; nouns, as in more coffee, more coffees; verbs, such as run more, jump more; or expressions of other categories. Furthermore, she suggests that expressions that comfortably and meaningfully appear in the comparative form should be distinguished from those that do not in terms of a general notion of "measurability": a measurable predicate has a domain of application with non-trivial structure. This notion unifies the independently motivated distinctions between, for example, gradable and non-gradable adjectives, mass and count nouns, singular and plural noun phrases, and telic and atelic verb phrases. Based on careful examination of the distribution of dimensions for comparison within the class of measurable predicates, she ties the selection of measure functions to the specific nature and structure of the domain entities targeted for measurement. The book ultimately explores how, precisely, we should understand semantic theories that invoke the "nature" of domain entities: does the theory depend for its explanation on features of metaphysical reality, or something else? Such questions are especially pertinent in light of a growing body of research in cognitive science exploring the understanding and acquisition of comparative sentences.

This book steers a middle course between two opposing conceptions that currently dominate the field of semantics, the logical and cognitive approaches. Patrick Duffley brings to light the inadequacies of both of these frameworks, arguing that linguistic semantics must be based on the linguistic sign itself and on the meaning that it conveys across the full range of its uses. The book offers 12 case studies that demonstrate the explanatory power of a sign-based semantics, dealing with topics such as complementation with aspectual and causative verbs, control and raising, wh- words, full-verb inversion, and existential-there constructions. It calls for a radical revision of the semantics/pragmatics interface, proposing that the dividing line be drawn between content that is linguistically encoded and content that is not encoded but still communicated. While traditional linguistic analysis often places meaning at the level of the sentence or construction, this volume argues that meaning belongs at the lower level of linguistic items, where the linguistic sign is stored in a stable, permanent, and direct relation with its meaning outside of any particular context. Building linguistic analysis from the ground up in this way provides it with a more solid foundation and increases its explanatory power.

This book is a defense of a Chomskyan conception of language against philosophical objectionsthat have been raised against it. It also provides, however, a critical examination of some of the glosses on the theory: the assimilation of it to traditional Rationalism; a supposed conflict between being innate and learned; an unclear ontology and the need of a "representational pretense" with regard to it; and, most crucially, a rejection of Chomsky's eliminativism about the role of intentionality not only in his own theories, but in any serious science at all. This last is a fundamentally important issue for linguistics, psychology, and philosophy that an examination of a theory as rich and promising as a Chomskyan linguistics should help illuminate. The book ends with a discussion of some further issues that Chomsky misleadingly associates with his theory: an anti-realism about ordinary thought and talk, and a dismissal of the mind/body problem(s), towards the solution of some of which his theory in fact makes an important contribution.

Linguistic pragmatism claims that what we literally say goes characteristically beyond what the linguistic properties themselves mandate. In this book, John Collins provides a novel defence of this doctrine, arguing that linguistic meaning alone fails to fix truth conditions. While this position is supported by a range of theorists, Collins shows that it naturally follows from a syntactic thesis concerning the relative sparseness of what language alone can provide to semantic interpretation. Language-and by extension meaning-provides constraints upon what a speaker can literally say, but does not characteristically encode any definite thing to say. Collins then defends this doctrine against a range of alternatives and objections, focusing in particular on an analysis of weather reports: 'it is raining/snowing/sunny'. Such reporting is mostly location-sensitive in the sense that the utterance is true or not depending upon whether it is raining/snowing/sunny at the location of the utterance, rather than some other location. Collins offers a full analysis of the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of weather reports, including many novel data. He shows that the constructions lack the linguistic resources to support the common literal locative readings. Other related phenomena are discussed such as the Saxon genitive, colour predication, quantifier domain restriction, and object deletion.

This stimulating volume provides fresh perspectives on choice, a key notion in systemic functional linguistics. Bringing together a global team of well-established and up-and-coming systemic functional linguists, it shows how the different senses of choice as process and as product are interdependent, and how they operate at all levels of language. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, it covers a range of linguistic viewpoints, informed by evolutionary theory, psychology, sociology and neuroscience, to produce a complex but unifying account of the issues. This book offers a critical examination of choice and is ideal for students and researchers working in all areas of functional linguistics as well as cognitive linguistics, second language acquisition, neurolinguistics and sociolinguistics.

The second edition of The Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory presents a comprehensive introduction to cutting-edge research in contemporary theoretical and computational semantics. * Features completely new content from the first edition of The Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory * Features contributions by leading semanticists, who introduce core areas of contemporary semantic research, while discussing current research * Suitable for graduate students for courses in semantic theory and for advanced researchers as an introduction to current theoretical work

This book contributes to the scholarly debate on the forms and patterns of interaction and discourse in modern digital communication by probing some of the social functions that online communication has for its users. An array of experts and scholars in the field address a range of forms of social interaction and discourses expressed by users on social networks and in public media. Social functions are reflected through linguistic and discursive practices that are either those of 'convergence' or 'controversy' in terms of how the discourse participants handle interpersonal relations or how they construct meanings in discourses. In this sense, the book elaborates on some very central concerns in the area of digital discourse analysis that have been reported within the last decade from various methodological perspectives ranging from sociolinguistics and pragmatics to corpus linguistics. This edited collection will be of particular interest to scholars and students in the fields of digital discourse analysis, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, social media and communication, and media and cultural studies.

Human societies name and classify colours in various ways. Knowing this, is it possible to retrieve colour systems from the past? This book presents the basic principles of modern colour semantics, including the recognition of basic vocabulary, subsets, specialised terms and the significance of non-colour features. Each point is illustrated by case studies drawn from modern and historical languages from around the world. These include discussions of Icelandic horses, Peruvian guinea-pigs, medieval roses, the colour yellow in Stuart England, and Polynesian children's colour terms. Major techniques used in colour research are presented and discussed, such as the evolutionary sequence, Natural Semantic Metalanguage and Vantage Theory. The book also addresses whether we can understand the colour systems of the past, including prehistory, by combining various semantic techniques currently used in both modern and historical colour research with archaeological and environmental information.

This book explores what new light philosophical approaches shed on a deeper understanding of (im)politeness. There have been numerous studies on linguistic (im)politeness, however, little attention has been paid to its philosophical underpinnings. This book opens new avenues for both (im)politeness and philosophy. It contributes to a fruitful dialogue among philosophy, pragmatics, and sociology. This volume appeals to students and researchers in these fields.

This book explores debaters' professional identity construction through implicit negation in televised debates from an interpersonal pragmatic perspective. It reveals the linguistic strategies used to indirectly negate the identity of others, and highlights three pairs of professional identity constructed through implicit negation: (1) expert vs. non-expert identity, (2) outsider vs. insider identity, (3) authentic vs. false identity. Furthermore, it proposes the Inter-relationality Principle, self-through-other identity and other-through-self identity, which contribute to Bucholtz and Hall's theory of identity construction. Lastly, the book discusses the relations between professional identity construction through implicit negation and im/politeness, and builds a model of professional identity construction through implicit negation based on interpersonal pragmatics. By focusing on the interpersonal pragmatics of professional identity construction, the book advances the interpersonal pragmatic study of identity construction, im/politeness and implicit negation. As such, it is a valuable resource for a broad readership, including graduate students, and scholars who are interested in professional identity construction, implicit negation and im/politeness research.

This book considers metaphor as a communicative phenomenon in the poetry of Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop and Seamus Heaney, in light of the relevance theory account of communication first developed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson in the 1980s. The first half of the book introduces relevance theory, situating it in relation to literary criticism, and then surveys the history of metaphor in literary studies and assesses relevance theory's account of metaphor, including recent developments within the theory such as Robyn Carston's notion of 'the lingering of the literal'. The second half of the book considers the role of metaphor in the work of three nineteenth- and twentieth-century poets through the lens of three terms central to relevance theory: inference, implicature and mutual manifestness. The volume will be of interest to students and scholars working in literary studies, pragmatics and stylistics, as well as to relevance theorists.

Critical Pragmatics develops three ideas: language is a way of doing things with words; meanings of phrases and contents of utterances derive ultimately from human intentions; and language combines with other factors to allow humans to achieve communicative goals. In this book, Kepa Korta and John Perry explain why critical pragmatics provides a coherent picture of how parts of language study fit together within the broader picture of human thought and action. They focus on issues about singular reference, that is, talk about particular things, places or people, which have played a central role in the philosophy of language for more than a century. They argue that attention to the 'reflexive' or 'utterance-bound' contents of utterances sheds new light on these old problems. Their important study proposes a new approach to pragmatics and should be of wide interest to philosophers of language and linguists.