In this book, Ariel Cohen makes the novel proposal that an implicit quantifier isn’t simply an empty category, but is generated by well-defined reinterpretation mechanisms. He demonstrates how this theory naturally accounts for puzzling properties of implicit quantification.
Semantics and pragmatics – the study of meaning, and meaning in context, respectively – are two fundamental areas of linguistics, and as such are crucial to our understanding of how meaning is created. However, their theoretical ideas are often introduced without making clear connections between views, theories, and problems. This pioneering volume is both a textbook and a research guide, taking the reader on a journey through language and ultimately enabling them to think about meaning as linguists and philosophers would. Assuming no prior knowledge of linguistics, it introduces semantics, pragmatics, and the philosophy of language, showing how all three fields can address the 'big questions' that run through the study of meaning. It covers key theories and approaches, while also enabling increasingly more sophisticated questions about the interconnected aspects of meaning, with the end goal of preparing the reader to make their own, original contributions to ideas about meaning.
The volume on Semantics and Pragmatics presents a collection of studies on linguistic meaning in Japanese, either as conventionally encoded in linguistic form (the field of semantics) or as generated by the interaction of form with context (the field of pragmatics), representing a range of ideas and approaches that are currently most influentialin these fields. The studies are organized around a model that has long currency in traditional Japanese grammar, whereby the linguistic clause consists of a multiply nested structure centered in a propositional core of objective meaning around which forms are deployed that express progressively more subjective meaning as one moves away from the core toward the periphery of the clause. The volume seeks to achieve a balance in highlighting both insights that semantic and pragmatic theory has to offer to the study of Japanese as a particular language and, conversely, contributions that Japanese has to make to semantic and pragmatic theory in areas of meaning that are either uniquely encoded, or encoded to a higher degree of specificity, in Japanese by comparison to other languages, such as conditional forms, forms expressing varying types of speaker modality, and social deixis.
This volume comprises thirteen original research papers and three overview papers presenting new work using a number of experimental techniques from psycho- and neurolinguistics in the three key areas of current semantics and pragmatics: implicature, negation and presupposition.
Explore the exciting research where semantics meets morphology, syntax and pragmatics. In this book, leading researchers use in-depth articles to explain a wide range of topics at these interfaces, including the semantics of intonation, inflection, compounding, argument structure, type shifting, compositionality, implicature, context dependence, deixis and presupposition. Now in paperback for the first time since its original publication, the highly cited material in this book is an ideal starting point for anyone interested in semantics where it crosses over with other dimensions of grammar.
This volume highlights important aspects of the complex relationship between common language and legal practice. It hosts an interdisciplinary discussion between cognitive science, philosophy of language and philosophy of law, in which an international group of authors aims to promote, enrich and refine this new debate. Philosophers of law have always shown a keen interest in cognitive science and philosophy of language in order to find tools to solve their problems: recently this interest was reciprocated and scholars from cognitive science and philosophy of language now look to the law as a testing ground for their theses. Using the most sophisticated tools available to pragmatics, sociolinguistics, cognitive sciences and legal theory, an interdisciplinary, international group of authors address questions like: Does legal interpretation differ from ordinary understanding? Is the common pragmatic apparatus appropriate to legal practice? What can pragmatics teach about the concept of law and pervasive legal phenomena such as testimony or legal disagreements?
The study of meaning in language embraces a diverse range of problems and methods. Philosophers think through the relationship between language and the world; linguists document speakers' knowledge of meaning; psychologists investigate the mechanisms of understanding and production. Up through the early 2000s, these investigations were generally compartmentalized: indeed, researchers often regarded both the subject-matter and the methods of other disciplines with skepticism. Since then, however, there has been a sea change in the field, enabling researchers increasingly to synthesize the perspectives of philosophy, linguistics and psychology and to energize all the fields with rich new intellectual perspectives that facilitate meaningful interchange. The time is right for a broader exploration and reflection on the status and problems of semantics as an interdisciplinary enterprise, in light of a decade of challenging and successful research in this area. Taking as its starting-point Lepore and Stone's 2014 book Imagination and Convention, this volume aims to reconcile different methodological perspectives while refocusing semanticists on new problems where integrative work will find the broadest and most receptive audience.
Pragmatics has grown considerably in its relatively short history, from its original disciplinary influences in philosophy and linguistics, into a multidisciplinary field that encompasses a range of theoretical and empirical concerns. The Routledge Pragmatics Encyclopedia captures the diversity of these intellectual interests in a comprehensive, single-volume edition. The Routledge Pragmatics Encyclopedia covers concepts and theories that have traditionally been associated with pragmatics, but also recent areas of development within the field, scholars who have had a significant influence on pragmatics, interdisciplinary exchanges between pragmatics and other areas of enquiry and all major research trends. Extensive cross-references between entries, along with suggestions for further reading at the end of entries, ensure that the interested reader can pursue additional study of chosen topics. With over 200 entries, written by leading academics from around the world, The Routledge Pragmatics Encyclopedia captures the rich complexity of pragmatics in an accessible manner. This reference will be relevant to students of pragmatics as well as to established scholars in the field.