0
Your cart

Your cart is empty

Browse All Departments
Price
  • R100 - R250 (89)
  • R250 - R500 (323)
  • R500+ (8,726)
  • -
Status
Format
Author / Contributor
Publisher

Books > Language & Literature > Language & linguistics > Semantics (meaning)

Studies in South Asian Linguistics - Sinhala and Other South Asian Languages (Hardcover, New): James W. Gair Studies in South Asian Linguistics - Sinhala and Other South Asian Languages (Hardcover, New)
James W. Gair; Edited by Barbara C. Lust
R5,125 Discovery Miles 51 250 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This volume collects twenty-nine published and unpublished papers by the linguist James Gair, considered the foremost western scholar of the Sri Lankan languages Sinhala and Jaffna Tamil. Ranging over thirty years, his work also considers issues in a variety of Indian languages, including Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Malayalam, and Bengali. The collection reflects the wide range of Gair's interests, from morpho-syntactic questions to questions regarding historical and areal linguistics, especially language contact and diglossia, and extending to language acquisition. By collecting these papers and making them newly accessible, this volume will provide an important resource not only for scholars of these languages but for linguists interested in the theoretical issues Gair explores.

Appliable Linguistics (Hardcover, New): Ahmar Mahboob, Naomi K Knight Appliable Linguistics (Hardcover, New)
Ahmar Mahboob, Naomi K Knight
R5,288 Discovery Miles 52 880 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This collection of research offers an initial step in the pursuit of an appliable linguistics. Appliable Linguistics takes everyday real-life language-related problems both theoretical and practical in diverse social, professional and academic contexts as its starting point. It then uses and contributes to a theoretical model of language that can respond to and is appliable in the context. The concept of appliable linguistics used in this volume is informed by the work of M.A.K. Halliday, who believes that "the value of a theory lies in the use that can be made of it." The chapters in this volume thus use and contribute to an appliable linguistics that engages with a range of issues including: translation, education, language teaching/learning, multimodality, media, social policy and action, and positive discourse analysis. This collection of research is offered as an initial step in the pursuit of Appliable Linguistics, which we hope will serve as a foundation for future work across the discipline.

Twentieth-Century Roots of Rhetorical Studies (Hardcover, New): Jim A. Kuypers, Andrew King Twentieth-Century Roots of Rhetorical Studies (Hardcover, New)
Jim A. Kuypers, Andrew King
R2,589 Discovery Miles 25 890 Ships in 18 - 22 working days

Kuypers, King, and their contributors explore the conception of rhetoric of eleven key American rhetoricians through analyses of their life's work. Each chapter provides a sense of that scholar's conception of rhetoric, be it through criticism, theory, or teaching. The communication discipline often highlights the work of others outside the discipline; however, it rarely acclaims the work of its own critics, teachers, and theorists. In this collection, the essays explore the innate mode of perception that guided the rhetorical understanding of the early critics. In so doing, this work dispels the myth that the discipline of Speech Communication was spawned from a monolithic and rigid center that came to be called neo-Aristotelianism. Scholars and researchers involved with the history of rhetoric, rhetorical criticism and theory, and American public address uill find this title to be a necessary addition to their collection.

Lexicography - Critical Concepts (Hardcover): Reinhard Hartmann Lexicography - Critical Concepts (Hardcover)
Reinhard Hartmann; Edited by R.R.K. Hartmann
R29,906 Discovery Miles 299 060 Ships in 10 - 15 working days


Lexicography is a growing academic specialization, with both a practical and a theoretical branch, numerous perspectives, and interdisciplinary significance. This collection draws together the most important and influential work in the field of lexicography.
As well as a new general introduction contextualizing the main themes, each section will be preceded by a smaller introduction by the editor, guiding the reader through the selection of pieces made, and drawing together the thematic threads of the individual pieces. Completed with an extensive index, this collection provides a comprehensive reference point for those working in the field.

The Language of Children (Hardcover): Julia Gillen The Language of Children (Hardcover)
Julia Gillen
R4,200 Discovery Miles 42 000 Ships in 10 - 15 working days


The Intertext series has been specifically designed to meet the needs of contemporary English Language Studies. Working with Texts: A core introduction to language analysis (second edition, 2001) is the foundation text, which is complemented by a range of 'satellite' titles. These provide students with hands-on practical experience of textual analysis through special topics and can be used individually or in conjunction with Working with Texts.
The Language of Children: *introduces the key theories of language acquisition and provides a historical overview of the subject *looks at all the ways children learn to communicate, from writing and talking to playing and using computers *includes a wide variety of real texts and data, from records of childrens first words to children's hand-written stories and emails *explores the language of children from a range of backgrounds and abilities, including deaf and bilingual children *is user-friendly and accessible, and provides a full glossary.

Materializing Literacies in Communities - The Uses of Literacy Revisited (Hardcover): Kate Pahl Materializing Literacies in Communities - The Uses of Literacy Revisited (Hardcover)
Kate Pahl
R4,955 Discovery Miles 49 550 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

What is a 'contemporary' understanding of literacy practices? How can 'literacy' be explained and situated? This book addresses literacy practices research, understanding it as both material and spatial, based in homes and communities, as well as in formal educational settings. It addresses a need to update the work done on theoretical literacy models, with the last major paradigms such as critical literacies and multiliteracies developed a decade ago. Kate Pahl draws on case studies to highlight experiences alternate from the traditional representations of literacy. She argues that the affordances of home and familiar spaces offer fertile ground for meaning-making. These resultant literacies are multimodal and linked to space, place and community. An important evaluative resource, this book details a range of methodologies for further researching literacy, describing ethnographic, visual, participatory and ecological approaches, together with connective ethnographies. This volume will appeal to academics and professions in literacy studies and language and education.

The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama (Hardcover, 2nd edition): Keir Elam The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama (Hardcover, 2nd edition)
Keir Elam
R3,786 Discovery Miles 37 860 Ships in 10 - 15 working days


Contents:
General Editor's Preface. Acknowledgements. 1. Preliminaries: Semiotics and Poetics: The Semiotics Enterprise; How Many Semiotics?; The material. 2. Foundations: Signs in the Theatre: Prague structuralism and the theatrical sign; Typologies of the sign. 3. Theatrical Communication: Codes, Systems and the Performance Text: Elements of theatrical communication; Theatrical Systems and Codes; Theatrical competence: frame, convention and the role of the audience. 4. Dramatic Logic: The construction of the dramatic world; Dramatic action and time; Actant, dramatis persona and the dramatic model. 5. Dramatic Discourse: Dramatic Communication; Context and deixis; Universe of discourse and co-text; Speech acts; The said and the unsaid: implicatures and figures; Textuality; Towards a dramatological analysis. 6. Concluding Comments: Theatre, Drama, Semiotics: Dramatic Text/performance text; A united enterprise? Suggestions for further reading. Bibliography. Index.

The Grammar of Discourse (Hardcover, 2nd ed. 1996): Robert E. Longacre The Grammar of Discourse (Hardcover, 2nd ed. 1996)
Robert E. Longacre
R4,195 Discovery Miles 41 950 Ships in 18 - 22 working days

The Second Edition of The Grammar of Discourse critically evaluates and updates Robert E. Longacre's ambitious work dedicated to the thesis that language is language only in context, and that context's natural role in the resolution of sentence ambiguities has been overlooked for too long by linguists. This new edition advances even further the discourse revolution' which Longacre predicted in the First Edition would come in response to the demand for greater explanatory power through context. The most cogent application of this, one which makes the book unique among linguistics texts, is the author's exhaustive investigation into the interface of the morphosyntax of a language with its textual structures. This expanded volume builds upon its predecessor's major points, with new chapters increasing the coverage of paragraph and clause structure-the latter being handled in a new chapter which solves a problem posed in the original edition: how holistic concerns of structure, especially the recognition of different strands of information, relate to the constituent structure of discourse. The insights contained in this chapter create an opportunity to tie in current discussions of transitivity, ergativity, the antipassive, agency hierarchy, order-preserving transformations, and word-order concerns into the structure of discourse.Other noteworthy features of the Second Edition include: The integration of information salience, local dominance, and paragraph type to answer the question What makes a discourse followable ?' -A study of dialogue relations-The formalization of the interrelations of tagmeme and syntagmeme, and of the varieties of exponence on the various levels of hierarchy-Theuse of an expanded and enriched statement calculus to better pinpoint logical relations between predications-The use of a similarly enriched predicate calculus to present case frames-A stepped diagram presentation of paragraph level analyses. With material tested in classes at the University of Texas, Arlington, this influential work merits serious consideration as a text for first-year graduate courses in linguistics.

Computer Applications in Language Learning (Hardcover, Reprint 2019): Theo Bongaerts, Pieter de Haan, Sylvia Lobbe, Herman... Computer Applications in Language Learning (Hardcover, Reprint 2019)
Theo Bongaerts, Pieter de Haan, Sylvia Lobbe, Herman Wekker
R3,342 Discovery Miles 33 420 Ships in 10 - 15 working days
The Grammar of French Quantification (Hardcover, 2011 ed.): Lena Baunaz The Grammar of French Quantification (Hardcover, 2011 ed.)
Lena Baunaz
R2,795 Discovery Miles 27 950 Ships in 18 - 22 working days

This book is the first extensive study on French Quantification in the field of Syntax. It provides a typology of four main quantified noun phrases in French (existential, universal, negative and "wh-"), detailing their syntactic, semantic and prosodic behaviors and showing that they can be reduced to two classes Split-DP structures or Floating quantification.

Relying on syntax and semantics, the book establishes a three-way structural typology of "wh" in-situ phrases and extends it to existentials. It pays special attention to the prosodic properties associated with their different readings and proposes an analysis of the distribution of subextraction and pied-piping. Similarly based on semantic and syntactic tests, the book reveals N(egative) words to be universal Quantifiers. It proposes a new structure of N-words in terms of constituent negation and includes a detailed analysis of the difference between "not an N" and "not all the N" in French.

"

Typological Changes in the Lexicon - Analytic Tendencies in English Noun Formation (Hardcover): Alexander Haselow Typological Changes in the Lexicon - Analytic Tendencies in English Noun Formation (Hardcover)
Alexander Haselow
R3,641 Discovery Miles 36 410 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This is the first study of the typological change of English from a synthetic towards an analytic language that focuses exclusively on the lexical domain of the language. It presents an innovative approach to linguistic typology by focusing on the different encoding techniques used in the lexicon, providing a theoretical framework for the description of structural types (synthetic, analytic) and encoding techniques (fusional, isolating, agglutinative, incorporating) found in the lexicon of a language. It is argued that, in the case of English, the change from syntheticity to analyticity did not only affect its inflectional system and the encoding of grammatical information, but also the derivational component. Based on a cognitive approach to derivation, the book provides empirical evidence for a considerable decline in the use of synthetic structures and a trend towards higher degrees of analyticity in a specific lexical domain of English, the formation of nouns by means of derivation. The full extent of this change surfaced during the transition from Old English to early Middle English, but it was later partly reversed though influence from French. The typological shift was thus the result of a global structural reorganization of the language that resulted in a fundamental change of the structure of words. The book also presents a comprehensive account of the historical development of nominal derivation from the beginnings of Old English until the end of the early Middle English period. Based on empirical data from written sources the study documents the frequency of use of all Germanic-based derivational morphemes for nominalizations over different subperiods and discusses their origin as well as important changes of their semantic and morphological properties.

The Modernist Self in Twentieth-Century English Literature - A Study in Self-Fragmentation (Hardcover): Dennis Brown, John... The Modernist Self in Twentieth-Century English Literature - A Study in Self-Fragmentation (Hardcover)
Dennis Brown, John Theodore
R2,649 Discovery Miles 26 490 Ships in 18 - 22 working days

The Modernist movement in literature had revolutionary aspirations and pioneered new possibilities of literary expression. One of its major projects was to question the nature of selfhood and to rewrite personal experience in terms of fragmentation, conflict and discontinuity. English literary Modernism, in particular, broke down the assumption that self-experience is unitary and coherent.;This book represents an exploration of the ways in which key modern writers challenged conventional ways of characterizing selfhood and, whether by poetic montage or stream-of-consciousness writing, developed a discourse expressive of the subtleties of experience in a post-Freudian world. It is argued that modernist texts were involved in self-representation long before post-structuralist or post-modernist theories were applied.

Critical Discourse Analysis - Critical Concepts in Linguistics (Hardcover): Michael Toolan Critical Discourse Analysis - Critical Concepts in Linguistics (Hardcover)
Michael Toolan
R25,712 Discovery Miles 257 120 Ships in 10 - 15 working days


Over the last decade, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) has accrued an exceptional amount of attention across a wide number of academic disciplines within the humanities and social sciences.
In almost every field of human activity, we are surrounded by and caught up in a network of texts and discourses. At the same time, a gradual enfranchising of individuals in Western societies tends to make us less inclined to accept those surrounding texts and discourses unquestioningly. It is these twin factors that underpin all studies that appear under the aegis of CDA.
This unique, multidisciplinary collection gathers together the most influential writings adopting a CDA approach, along with the most important antecedent essays and articles from the earlier Twentieth Century. The articles that make up this collection are drawn from a wide range of journal sources, including articles critical of the CDA approach as well as those that illustrate applications of its principles and methods.
A detailed index and new introduction by the editor will help the reader navigate this wealth of diverse material.

Professing Rhetoric - Selected Papers From the 2000 Rhetoric Society of America Conference (Hardcover): Frederick J Antczak,... Professing Rhetoric - Selected Papers From the 2000 Rhetoric Society of America Conference (Hardcover)
Frederick J Antczak, Cinda Coggins, Geoffrey D Klinger
R4,211 Discovery Miles 42 110 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Representing current theory and research in rhetoric, this volume brings together scholarship from a variety of orientations--theoretical, critical, historical, and pedagogical. Some contributions cover work that has previously been silenced or unrecognized, including Native American, African American, Latino, and women's rhetorics. Others explore rhetoric's relationship to performance and to the body, or to revising canons, stases, topoi, and pisteis. Still others are reworking the rhetorical lexicon to comprise contemporary theory. Among these diverse interests, rhetoricians find common themes and share intellectual and pedagogical enterprises that hold them together even as their institutional situations keep them apart.
Topics discussed in this collection include:
*Rhetoric as figurality; comparative and contrastive rhetorics; rhetoric and gender; and rhetorics of science and technology;
*Rhetoric and reconceptions of the public sphere; rhetoric and public memory; and rhetorics of globalization and social change, including issues of race, ethnicity, and nationalism;
*Rhetoric's institutionalized place in the academy, in relation to other humanities and to the interpretive social sciences; and
*The place of rhetoric in the formation of departments and the development of pedagogy
With its origins in the 2000 Rhetoric Society of America (RSA) conference, this volume represents the range and vitality of current scholarship in rhetoric. The conversations contained herein indicate that professing rhetoric is, at the turn of the millennium, an intellectual activity that engages with and helps formulate the most important public and scholarly questions of today. As such, it will be engaging reading for scholars and students, and is certain to provoke further thought, discussion, and exploration.

Oscar Wilde as a Character in Victorian Fiction (Hardcover, Annotated Ed): A Kingston Oscar Wilde as a Character in Victorian Fiction (Hardcover, Annotated Ed)
A Kingston
R1,426 Discovery Miles 14 260 Ships in 18 - 22 working days

This book documents how Oscar Wilde was appropriated as a fictional character by no less than thirty-two of his contemporaries. Focusing on Wilde's relationships with many of these writers, Kingston examines and critiques 'Wildean' portraits by such celebrated authors as Joseph Conrad, Arthur Conan Doyle, Henry James, George Bernard Shaw and Bram Stoker, as well as some lesser-known writers. Many fascinating, little-known biographical and literary connections are revealed. While this work will be of significant interest to scholars of Wilde, it is also written in a clear, accessible style which will appeal to the non-academic reader with a general interest in Wilde or the late Victorian period.

The V2 Conspiracy - A synchronic and a diachronic analysis of verbal positions in Germanic languages (Hardcover, Reprint 2019):... The V2 Conspiracy - A synchronic and a diachronic analysis of verbal positions in Germanic languages (Hardcover, Reprint 2019)
Fred Weerman
R3,343 Discovery Miles 33 430 Ships in 10 - 15 working days
Pragmatics Online (Paperback): Kate Scott Pragmatics Online (Paperback)
Kate Scott
R1,209 Discovery Miles 12 090 Ships in 9 - 17 working days

*assumes no prior knowledge of pragmatics and will take readers through the basics quickly so that they can apply the ideas to online environments *covers a wide range of online media platforms from email, chatrooms, and IM through to social media including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, and YouTube *won't date fast as focus is on how ideas and topics from pragmatics can be applied to mediated contexts, irrespective of the particular media

Structures for Semantics (Hardcover, 1991 ed.): Fred Landman Structures for Semantics (Hardcover, 1991 ed.)
Fred Landman
R4,217 Discovery Miles 42 170 Ships in 18 - 22 working days

Formalization plays an important role in semantics. Doing semantics and following the literature requires considerable technical sophistica tion and acquaintance with quite advanced mathematical techniques and structures. But semantics isn't mathematics. These techniques and structures are tools that help us build semantic theories. Our real aim is to understand semantic phenomena and we need the technique to make our understanding of these phenomena precise. The problems in semantics are most often too hard and slippery, to completely trust our informal understanding of them. This should not be taken as an attack on informal reasoning in semantics. On the contrary, in my view, very often the essential insight in a diagnosis of what is going on in a certain semantic phenomenon takes place at the informal level. It is very easy, however, to be misled into thinking that a certain informal insight provides a satisfying analysis of a certain problem; it will often turn out that there is a fundamental unclarity about what the informal insight actually is. Formalization helps to sharpen those insights and put them to the test."

The Discursive Construction of History - Remembering the Wehrmacht's War of Annihilation (Hardcover): Steven Fligelstone,... The Discursive Construction of History - Remembering the Wehrmacht's War of Annihilation (Hardcover)
Steven Fligelstone, W. Manoschek, A. Pollak, Hannes Heer, Ruth Wodak
R1,428 Discovery Miles 14 280 Ships in 18 - 22 working days

How do democratic and pluralistic societies cope with traumatic events in their past? What strategies and taboos are employed to reconstruct wars, revolutions, torturing, mass killings and genocide in a way to make their contradiction to basic human rights and values invisible? This interdisciplinary volume analyzes in detail for the first time, in multiple genres, the history and image of the "German "Wehrmacht"" and the debates in Austria and Germany surrounding two highly contested exhibitions about the war crimes of the German "Wehrmacht" during WWII.

Modality in Germanic Languages - Historical and Comparative Perspectives (Hardcover, Reprint 2011): Toril Swan, Olaf J. Westvik Modality in Germanic Languages - Historical and Comparative Perspectives (Hardcover, Reprint 2011)
Toril Swan, Olaf J. Westvik
R4,819 Discovery Miles 48 190 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

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 Language of Propositions and Events - Issues in the Syntax and the Semantics of Nominalization (Hardcover, 1993 ed.):... The Language of Propositions and Events - Issues in the Syntax and the Semantics of Nominalization (Hardcover, 1993 ed.)
Alessandro Zucchi
R4,174 Discovery Miles 41 740 Ships in 18 - 22 working days

At a superficial examination, English has different types of nominals with similar meaning and distribution: (1)a. John's performance ofthe song b. J ohn' s performing of the song c. John's performing the song d. the fact that John performs the song These nominals are also perceived by English speakers to be related to the same sentential construction: (2) John performs the song A more accurate inspection reveals, however, that the nominals in (1) differ both in their distribution and in the range of interpretations they allow. An adequate theory of nominalization should explicate rigorously how nominals of the types in (1) are related to sentential construction (2), and should also account for their distributional differences and meaning differences. The task of this book is to develop such a theory. I defend two main theses. The first is that, in order to provide an adequate semantics for the nominals in (1), one needs to distinguish among three types of entities in the domain of discourse (in addition to the type of ordinary individuals): events, propositions, and states xiii XIV PREFACE of affairs. I argue that the nominals in (1) differ in their ability to denote entities of these types and that predicates differ in their ability to select for them.

Power of Language - How Discourse Influences Society (Hardcover, 2nd Revised edition): Lynne Young, Michael Fitzgerald Power of Language - How Discourse Influences Society (Hardcover, 2nd Revised edition)
Lynne Young, Michael Fitzgerald
R2,001 Discovery Miles 20 010 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

The second edition of this highly regarded textbook is designed to introduce students at the tertiary level to both Systemic Functional Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis. It develops critical analytical skills by rooting analysis in SFL methodology so that students can learn to analyze a range of discourse types. Each chapter builds a methodological foundation for the development of critical discourse analytical skills. SFL provides novice analysts with a rich set of resources for CDA and equips them to better reflect on what language is doing and why. The Power of Language offers explanations along with a range of sample analyses to illustrate theory and provide applications of the methodologies introduced in each chapter. Students not only learn by studying a number of analyses but carry out their own analytical work on other samples, thus gaining experience. Each chapter also includes examples of analyses by well know researchers so that novice analysts become familiar with various approaches to analysis.This new edition has been thoroughly updated throughout and features an expanded first chapter on language and international conflict, a new second chapter focusing on language and political fear, an expanded chapter on multimodal communication and an entirely new chapter on language and social media. Other chapters have been updated with new sample analyses and activities.

Lexicography - An Introduction (Paperback): Howard Jackson Lexicography - An Introduction (Paperback)
Howard Jackson
R1,740 Discovery Miles 17 400 Ships in 10 - 15 working days


This book is an accessible introduction to lexicography - the study of dictionaries.
Dictionaries are used at home and at school, cited in law courts, sermons and parliament, and referred to by crossword addicts and scrabble players alike. Lexicography provides a detailed overview of the history, types and content of these essential references. Howard Jackson analyses a wide range of dictionaries, from those for native speakers to thematic dictionaries and those on CD-ROM, to reveal the ways in which dictionaries fulfil their dual function of describing the vocabulary of English and providing a useful and accessible reference resource.
Beginning with an introduction to the terms used in lexicology to describe words and vocabulary, and offering summaries and suggestions for further reading, Lexicography: An Introduction is highly student-friendly. It is ideal for anyone with an interest in the development and use of dictionaries.

Workplace Discourse (Hardcover, New): Almut Koester Workplace Discourse (Hardcover, New)
Almut Koester
R5,275 Discovery Miles 52 750 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

"Workplace Discourse" provides an overview of the rapidly developing field of spoken and written workplace interaction, taking a fresh perspective on research methods and key issues in the field. It examines discourse in a wide variety of workplace contexts using both genre analysis and a corpus-driven approach. The book draws on Koester's previous research, but examines the current state of workplace discourse more widely. It provides a descriptive account of the linguistic characteristics of workplace discourse within their social and organizational contexts, with illustrative extracts from real texts and naturally occurring spoken interactions. It showcases specific issues at the forefront of current research and practice in this area: the use of English as a lingua franca, the importance of relationship building and the teaching applications of research. Discourse is one of the most significant concepts of contemporary thinking in the humanities and social sciences as it concerns the ways language mediates and shapes our interactions with each other and with the social, political and cultural formations of our society. "The Continuum Discourse Series" aims to capture the fast-developing interest in discourse to provide students, new and experienced teachers and researchers in applied linguistics, ELT and English language with an essential bookshelf. Each book deals with a core topic in discourse studies to give an in-depth, structured and readable introduction to an aspect of the way language is used in real life.

Epistemic Indefinites - Exploring Modality Beyond the Verbal Domain (Hardcover): Luis Alonso-Ovalle, Paula Menendez-Benito Epistemic Indefinites - Exploring Modality Beyond the Verbal Domain (Hardcover)
Luis Alonso-Ovalle, Paula Menendez-Benito
R3,683 Discovery Miles 36 830 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This book brings together novel work on the semantics and pragmatics of certain indefinite expressions that also convey modality. These epistemic indefinites are determiners or pronouns that signal ignorance on the part of the speaker, such as German irgendein and Spanish algun: the sentence Maria se caso con algun medico ('Maria married some doctor or other') both makes an existential statement that there is a doctor that Maria married and signals the speaker's inability or unwillingness to identify the doctor in question. Although epistemic indefinites have featured in recent semantic literature, a full understanding of the phenomenon is still lacking: there is currently no agreement on the source of their epistemic component; there is insufficient cross-linguistic data to develop a semantic typology of these items; and the parallelisms and differences between epistemic indefinites and other expressions that convey epistemic modality have not been explored in depth. In this volume, a team of experts in the field offer novel empirical observations and important theoretical insights on epistemic indefinites and related topics such as modal free relatives, modified numerals, and epistemic modals. They provide a coherent overview of the issues that shape the subject as well as placing them in the context of current semantic research, moving towards the development of a semantic typology of epistemic indefinites that explores the place of these expressions within a general typology of modal items.

Free Delivery
Pinterest Twitter Facebook Google+
You may like...
Cross-Linguistic Studies of Imposters…
Chris Collins Hardcover R3,844 Discovery Miles 38 440
Varieties of Spoken French
Sylvain Detey, Jacques Durand, … Hardcover R5,158 Discovery Miles 51 580
Talking with the President - The…
John Wilson Hardcover R3,568 Discovery Miles 35 680
How Words Mean - Lexical Concepts…
Vyvyan Evans Hardcover R4,406 Discovery Miles 44 060
Donald Davidson's Truth-Theoretic…
Ernest LePore, Kirk Ludwig Hardcover R3,034 Discovery Miles 30 340
Argument Licensing and Agreement
Claire Halpert Hardcover R3,575 Discovery Miles 35 750
Abstract Objects and the Semantics of…
Friederike Moltmann Hardcover R2,623 Discovery Miles 26 230
The Oxford Handbook of Pragmatics
Yan Huang Hardcover R4,534 Discovery Miles 45 340
Talking About Troubles in Conversation
Gail Jefferson Hardcover R3,179 Discovery Miles 31 790
The Oxford Handbook of Information…
Caroline Fery, Shinichiro Ishihara Hardcover R4,569 Discovery Miles 45 690

 

Partners