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82 books match the query 'Semantics' and 18 start with t

cover of The Construction of Meaning

The Construction of Meaning

Edited by David I. Beaver, Luis D. Casillas Martinez, Brady Z. Clark, and Stefan

CSLI, 2002

This volume collects leading-edge work on the semantics and pragmatics of natural language, including contributions from Eve Clark, Paul Kiparsky, Stanley Peters, Dag Westerstahl, and Arnold Zwicky. The research covers a number of languages—English, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, and Quechua—and phenomena, including adverbial modification, classifiers, constructional meaning, control phenomena, evidentiality, events semantics, focus, presupposition, and quantification. This is an essential volume for anyone interested in the latest developments in the study of meaning.
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cover of The Daily Lives of the Anglo-Saxons

The Daily Lives of the Anglo-Saxons

Carole Biggam

Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2017

Essays in Anglo-Saxon Studies v.8 (Glasgow, 2015).

Insights into the lives of any group of historical people are provided by three main types of evidence: their language, their literature and their material culture. The contributors to this volume draw on all three types of evidence in order to present new research into the lives of the Anglo-Saxons. The particular focus is on daily life – the ordinary rather than the extraordinary, the normal rather than the exceptional. Rather than attempting an overview, the essays address individual scenarios in greater depth, but with an emphasis on shared experience.

The following scholars have contributed essays to this collection:

Martha Bayless
University of Oregon

Carole P. Biggam
University of Glasgow

Paul Cavill
University of Nottingham

Amy W. Clark
University of California, Berkeley

James Graham-Campbell
University College London

Antonina Harbus
Macquarie University, Sydney

Carole Hough
University of Glasgow

Daria Izdebska
Liverpool Hope University

Karen Louise Jolly
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa

Alexandra Lester-Makin
University of Manchester

Elisabeth Okasha
University College, Cork

Phyllis Portnoy
University of Manitoba

Jane Roberts
University of London
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cover of The Generic Book: The Semantics of Generics

The Generic Book

The Semantics of Generics

Edited by Gregory N. Carlson and Francis Jeffry Pelletier

University of Chicago Press, 1995

In an attempt to address the theoretical gap between linguistics and philosophy, a group of semanticists, calling itself the Generic Group, has worked to develop a common view of genericity. Their research has resulted in this book, which consists of a substantive introduction and eleven original articles on important aspects of the interpretation of generic expressions. The introduction provides a clear overview of the issues and synthesizes the major analytical approaches to them. Taken together, the papers that follow reflect the current state of the art in the semantics of generics, and afford insight into various generic phenomena.
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cover of The Language Parallax: Linguistic Relativism and Poetic Indeterminacy

The Language Parallax

Linguistic Relativism and Poetic Indeterminacy

By Paul Friedrich

University of Texas Press, 1986

Humankind has always been fascinated and troubled by the way languages and dialects differ. Linguistically based differences in point of view have preoccupied many original minds of the past, such as Kant, and remain at the forefront of language study: in philosophy, anthropology, literary criticism, and other fields.

Paul Friedrich's The Language Parallax argues persuasively that the "locus and focus" of differences among languages lies not so much in practical or rational aspects as in the complexity and richness of more poetic dimensions—in the nuances of words, or the style and voice of an author. This poetic reformulation of what has been called "linguistic relativism" is grounded in the author's theory of the imagination as a main source of poetic indeterminacy. The reformulation is also based on the intimate relation of the concentrated language of poetry to the potential or possibilities for poetry in ordinary conversation, dreams, and other experiences. The author presents challenging thoughts on the order and system of language in their dynamic relation to indeterminacy and, ultimately, disorder and chaos.

Drawing on his considerable fieldwork in anthropology and linguistics, Friedrich interweaves distinct and provocative elements: the poetry of language difference, the indeterminacy in dialects and poetic forms, the discovery of underlying orders, the workings of different languages, the strength of his own poetry. The result is an innovative and organic whole.

The Language Parallax, then, is a highly original work with a single bold thesis. It draws on research and writing that has involved, in particular, English, Russian, and the Tarascan language of Mexico, as well as the personal and literary study of the respective cultures. Anthropologist, linguist, and poet, Friedrich synthesizes from his experience in order to interrelate language variation and structure, the creative individual, ideas of system-in-process, and questions of scientific and aesthetic truth. The result is a new view of language held to the light of its potentially creative nature.

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cover of The Many Faces of Agreement: Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, and Discourse Factors in Serbo-Croatian Agreement

The Many Faces of Agreement

Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, and Discourse Factors in Serbo-Croatian Agreement

Stephen Wechsler and Larisa Zlatic

CSLI, 2003

Agreement features correlate closely with semantics as well as with noun morphology. This book presents a precise formal theory of those correlations, illustrated with Serbo-Croatian and other languages. In explaining regular agreement as a network of constraints, the theory also predicts a restricted set of exceptional situations where normal agreement can give way to agreement mismatches.

With this framework in place, the authors explore a number of factors that affect agreement processes. The theory even explains the striking cross-linguistic generalizations expressed in Corbett's Agreement Hierarchy. Agreement is shown to be a distributed phenomenon, manifesting its many faces among the various components of grammar.
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cover of The Projection of Arguments: Lexical and Compositional Factors

The Projection of Arguments

Lexical and Compositional Factors

Edited by Miriam Butt and Wilhelm Geuder

CSLI, 1998

It is becoming increasingly clear that the standard approach to argument linking in terms of "thematic roles", which are determined by the lexical meaning of verbs, has some serious shortcomings. This volume sets out to explore alternatives to a rigid model of lexical projection. It brings together a set of papers from different backgrounds that converge on the general hypothesis that the many semantic factors which influence the projection of arguments should be attributed to compositional processes rather than to the fixed contents of lexical entries. Proposals for a reassessment of the lexicon-syntax interface include flexible models of lexical meaning with productive derivation of alternants, as well as models where the structural context supplants much of the putative role of lexical entries. The topics addressed include questions of argument hierarchies and adicity of predicates, and the syntax and semantics of argument alternations in a set of very diverse languages, which include English, Dutch, Scottish Gaelic, Finnish, Hebrew, Kannada, Malay, Inuit, and Yaqui.
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cover of The Semantic Basis of Argument Structure

The Semantic Basis of Argument Structure

Stephen Wechsler

CSLI, 1995

Stephen Wechsler Subject: Linguistics; Semantics; Grammar--Syntax
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cover of The Semantics of Incorporation: From Argument Structure to Discourse Transparency

The Semantics of Incorporation

From Argument Structure to Discourse Transparency

Donka F. Farkas and Henriëtte de Swart

CSLI, 2003

Distinguishing between discourse referents and thematic arguments, the analysis of incorporation proposed by Donka Farkas and Henriettë de Swart accounts for the relationship between morphological and semantic number, the contrasts between incorporated singulars and incorporated plurals, and various "shades" of discourse transparency. The framework of Discourse Representation Theory used is a theory well-suited for connecting sentence-level and discourse-level semantics.

The analysis presented in this book has important consequences for a cross-linguistic theory of anaphora. Linguists and logicians interested in discourse structure, cross-linguistic semantics, and the relationship between morpho-syntax and meaning will find this an engaging and innovative work.
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cover of The Semantics of Syntax: A Minimalist Approach to Grammar

The Semantics of Syntax

A Minimalist Approach to Grammar

Denis Bouchard

University of Chicago Press, 1995

During the last thirty years, most linguists and philosophers have assumed that meaning can be represented symbolically and that the mental processing of language involves the manipulation of symbols. Scholars have assembled strong evidence that there must be linguistic representations at several abstract levels—phonological, syntactic, and semantic—and that those representations are related by a describable system of rules. Because meaning is so complex, linguists often posit an equally complex relationship between semantic and other levels of grammar.

The Semantics of Syntax is an elegant and powerful analysis of the relationship between syntax and semantics. Noting that meaning is underdetermined by form even in simple cases, Denis Bouchard argues that it is impossible to build knowledge of the world into grammar and still have a describable grammar. He thus proposes simple semantic representations and simple rules to relate linguistic levels. Focusing on a class of French verbs, Bouchard shows how multiple senses can be accounted for by the assumption of a single abstract core meaning along with background information about how objects behave in the world. He demonstrates that this move simplifies the syntax at no cost to the descriptive power of the semantics. In two important final chapters, he examines the consequences of his approach for standard syntactic theories.
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cover of The Semantics/Pragmatics Distinction

The Semantics/Pragmatics Distinction

Edited by Claudia Bianchi

CSLI, 2005

The contributors to this volume tend to agree on one thing: semantic theory cannot retain its traditional purity, free of pragmatic contextual considerations. This claim provides the setting for various provocative approaches to a precise definition of pragmatics and its reconciliation with semantics—a collection of leading-edge work examining the semantics/pragmatics dispute in terms of a broad range of phenomena, showing how these issues reach from linguistics into a number of other fields, and examining the role of pragmatics in different forms of cross-cultural communication.
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cover of The Syntactic Phenomena of English

The Syntactic Phenomena of English

James D. McCawley

University of Chicago Press, 1998

This second edition of James D. McCawley's classic textbook offers in one volume a complete course in the syntactic structure of English. New to this edition are sections on appositive constructions, parasitic gaps, contrastive negation, and comparative conditional sentences, as well as expanded coverage of cleft sentences and free relatives. The presentation is coherent, comprehensive, and systematically organized, beginning with an overview of McCawley's approach to syntactic analysis and progressing through the major constructions and processes of English grammar. No prior special knowledge of syntax is presupposed, and the number and variety of exercises after each chapter have been increased.

And now available from the author! Answers to Selected Exercises.

Instructors using James D. McCawley's The Syntactic Phenomena of English, Second Edition may request a complimentary copy of Answers to Selected Exercises in The Syntactic Phenomena of English by writing on their department's letterhead to the author, James D. McCawley, Department of Linguistics, 1010 E. 59th Street, Chicago, IL 60637. [Note: This material is available only from the author and is not available from the University of Chicago Press.]

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cover of The Syntax and Semantics of the Verb in Classical Greek: An Introduction: Third Edition

The Syntax and Semantics of the Verb in Classical Greek

An Introduction: Third Edition

Albert Rijksbaron

University of Chicago Press, 2007

The verb is, in any language, the motor of all communication: no verb, no action. In Greek, verb forms change not only with person, number, tense, and voice, but in four possible moods as well. Available now in a special reprint for the North American market, The Syntax and Semantics of the Verb in Classical Greek is an incomparable resource to students and scholars charged with the considerable task of untangling the Greek language’s many complexities. With clear, concise instruction, Albert Rijksbaron shows how the various verb forms contribute to the richness of the Greek literature as we know it, in this essential guide for both novices and experienced practitioners.

“[This study] belongs in the library of any Hellenist and any linguist interested in ancient Greek.”—Classics Newsletter (Anzeiger für die Altertumswissenschaft)

“Every use is described with concision and clarity.”—Kratylos

“The book offers an example of how the empirical thoroughness of traditional Classical scholarship can be brought into contact with general linguistic theory.”—Language

 

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cover of The Tbilisi Symposium on Logic, Language and Computation: Selected Papers

The Tbilisi Symposium on Logic, Language and Computation

Selected Papers

Edited by Jonathan Ginzburg, Zurab Khasidashvili, Carl Vogel, Jean-Jacques Lévy,

CSLI, 1998

This volume brings together papers from linguists, logicians, and computer scientists from thirteen countries (Armenia, Denmark, France, Georgia, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Poland, Spain, Sweden, UK, and USA). This collection aims to serve as a catalyst for new interdisciplinary developments in language, logic and computation and to introduce new ideas from the expanded European academic community. Spanning a wide range of disciplines, the papers cover such topics as formal semantics of natural language, dynamic semantics, channel theory, formal syntax of natural language, formal language theory, corpus-based methods in computational linguistics, computational semantics, syntactic and semantic aspects of l-calculus, non-classical logics, and a fundamental problem in predicate logic.
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cover of The Use of Language

The Use of Language

Prashant Parikh

CSLI, 2001

Building on the work of J. L. Austin and Paul Grice, The Use of Language develops an original and systematic game-theoretic account of communication, speaker meaning, and addressee interpretation, extending this analysis to conversational implicature and the Gricean maxims, illocutionary force, miscommunication, visual representation and visual implicature, and aspects of discourse.
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cover of Theory and Evidence in Semantics

Theory and Evidence in Semantics

Edited by Erhard W. Hinrichs and John Nerbonne

CSLI, 2009

In Theory and Evidence in Semantics, editors Erhard W. Hinrichs and John Nerbonne present a series of state-of-the-art papers that investigate the interface of natural language semantics with other modules of grammar—such as morphology, syntax, and pragmatics—and pursue applications of semantic theory in computational linguistics. Written by some of the leading scholars in the field, and strongly influenced by the seminal work of David R. Dowty in model-theoretical semantics, the papers provide novel accounts of highly complex sets of semantic phenomena, including anaphora, coordination, ellipsis, interrogatives, and negative and collective predicates, as well as tense and aspect.

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cover of Think Generic!: The Meaning and Use of Generic Sentences

Think Generic!

The Meaning and Use of Generic Sentences

Ariel Cohen

CSLI, 1999

Our knowledge about the world is often expressed by generic sentences, yet their meanings are far from clear. This book provides answers to central problems concerning generics: what do they mean? Which factors affect their interpretation? How can one reason with generics? Cohen proposes that the meanings of generics are probability judgments, and shows how this view accounts for many of their puzzling properties, including lawlikeness. Generics are evaluated with respect to alternatives. Cohen argues that alternatives are induced by the kind as well as by the predicated property, and thus provides a uniform account of the varied interpretations of generics. He studies the formal properties of alternatives and provides a compositional account of their derivation by focus and presupposition. Cohen uses his semantics of generics to provide a formal characterization of adequate default reasoning, and proves some desirable results of this formalism.
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cover of Three Demonstrations and a Funeral and Other Essays

Three Demonstrations and a Funeral and Other Essays

Maria de Ponte, Kepa Korta, and John Perry

CSLI, 2024

A collaboration between three distinguished professors of linguistics and philosophy.

The result of the collaboration between three distinguished philosophers, this book comprises the best sample of one of the most original theories in contemporary philosophy of language and communication—Critical Pragmatics. They present the development of the theory from its initial sprout, with “Three Demonstrations and a Funeral” (2006) as its first visible result, to a critical clarification of its tenets in “Critical Pragmatics: Nine Misconceptions” (2023). After Korta and Perry’s Critical Pragmatics (2011), this is the most important book on Critical Pragmatics, as it was conceived, developed and applied by its creators. Having de Ponte, Korta and Perry’s most important papers together on one place will be of great value to both philosophers and linguists.
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cover of Truth and Veridicality in Grammar and Thought: Mood, Modality, and Propositional Attitudes

Truth and Veridicality in Grammar and Thought

Mood, Modality, and Propositional Attitudes

Anastasia Giannakidou and Alda Mari

University of Chicago Press, 2021

Can language directly access what is true, or is the truth judgment affected by the subjective, perhaps even solipsistic, constructs of reality built by the speakers of that language? The construction of such subjective representations is known as veridicality, and in this book Anastasia Giannakidou and Alda Mari deftly address the interaction between truth and veridicality in the grammatical phenomena of mood choice: the indicative and subjunctive choice in the complements of modal expressions and propositional attitude verbs.

Combining several strands of analysis—formal linguistic semantics, syntactic theory, modal logic, and philosophy of language—Giannakidou and Mari’s theory not only enriches the analysis of linguistic modality, but also offers a unified perspective of modals and propositional attitudes. Their synthesis covers mood, modality, and attitude verbs in Greek and Romance languages, while also offering broader applications for languages lacking systematic mood distinction, such as English. Truth and Veridicality in Grammar and Thought promises to shape longstanding conversations in formal semantics, pragmatics, and philosophy of language, among other areas of linguistics.

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