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This book considers important aspects of the syntax of sentences and their relation to the extra-sentential context. The relation between a sentence and the context is frequently reckoned to be in some sense "syntax-free", in that it is not syntactically represented but introduced post-syntactically by semantic rules of interpretation. Alessandra Giorgi develops a different perspective through an empirically grounded exploration of temporal indexicality: she argues that the speaker's temporal location is specified in the syntactic structure. She supports her analysis with theoretical and empirical arguments based on data mainly from English and Italian but also considering Chinese and Romani...
This 1991 study of the argument structure of lexical projections makes substantial advances in this relatively neglected area.
Description Logics are a family of knowledge representation languages that have been studied extensively in Artificial Intelligence over the last two decades. They are embodied in several knowledge-based systems and are used to develop various real-life applications. The Description Logic Handbook provides a thorough account of the subject, covering all aspects of research in this field, namely: theory, implementation, and applications. Its appeal will be broad, ranging from more theoretically-oriented readers, to those with more practically-oriented interests who need a sound and modern understanding of knowledge representation systems based on Description Logics. The chapters are written by some of the most prominent researchers in the field, introducing the basic technical material before taking the reader to the current state of the subject, and including comprehensive guides to the literature. In sum, the book will serve as a unique reference for the subject, and can also be used for self-study or in conjunction with Knowledge Representation and Artificial Intelligence courses.
This book shows how pragmatics and philosophy are interconnected, and explores the consequences and ramifications of this innovative idea, especially in addressing and solving the problem of breaking Grice's circle. The author applies philosophy in order to get to a better understanding of pragmatics, and pragmatics in order to get a better understanding of philosophy. The book starts with a chapter on the non-cancellability of explicatures and the role that this idea plays in the resolution of Grice’s circle, and proceeds with the discussion of other topics in which explicatures or cancellability play an important and decisive role. While the reader proceeds in the reading of this book, they accumulate notions and pieces of knowledge which will be of invaluable use when arriving at the chapter on conversational presuppositions (and related chapters), where the author expresses his most radical views: namely that (potential) presuppositions are indeed cancellable, contrary to what many believe.
This book discusses the concept of indirect reporting in relation to sociopragmatic, philosophical, and cognitive factors. In addition, it deals with several state-of-the-art topics with regard to indirect reports, such as trust, politeness, refinery and photosynthetic processes and cognitive features. The book presents socio-cognitive accounts of indirect reports that take into consideration Grice’s Cooperation Principle and Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory. It discusses direct and indirect reports and their similarities and differences, with a focus on the neglected role of the hearer in indirect reports. It presents an extensive comparison of translation and indirect reports (wit...
This volume brings together a wide array of papers which explore, among other things, to what extent languages and cultures are variable with respect to the interactions around the event of death. Motivated by J. L. Mey’s idea of the pragmeme, a situated speech act, the volume has both theoretical and practical implications for scholars working in different fields of enquiry. As the papers in this volume reveal, despite the terminological differences between various disciplines, the interactions around the event of death serve to provide solace, not only to the dying, but also to the family and friends of the deceased, thus helping them to “accommodate” to the new state of affairs.
This monograph on indirect reports offers insights on the semantics/pragmatics interface and a refinement of the notion of explicature. The volume is written in an engaging style and guides the reader through the theoretical problems and their ramifications. The thorniest problem in the study of indirect reports is their polyphonic nature, and how the listener distinguishes between the reporter’s voice and the original speaker’s voice, either by contextual clues or, in the absence of such clues, by resorting to pragmatic principles. The introductory chapter discusses the main issues that will be addressed in the volume. The next chapters focus on the various aspects of indirect reports, covering both theory and practical applications.
This book offers the most exhaustive and comprehensive treatment available of the Verb Second property. It includes formal theoretical work alongside psycholinguistic and language acquisition studies, examines data from a range of languages, and shows that V2 phenomena are much more widely attested cross-linguistically than previously thought.
This volume serves as a reference on the field of cognitive semantics. It offers a systematic and original discussion of the issues at the core of the debate in semiotics and the cognitive sciences. It takes into account the problems of representation, the nature of mind, the structure of perception, beliefs associated with habits, social cognition, autism, intersubjectivity and subjectivity. The chapters in this volume present the foundation of semiotics as a theory of cognition, offer a semiotic model of cognitive integration that combines Enactivism and the Extended Mind Theory, and investigate the role of imagination as the origin of perception. The author develops an account of beliefs that are associated with habits and meaning, grounded in Pragmatism, testing his Narrative Practice Semiotic Hypothesis on persons with autism spectrum disorders. He also integrates his ideas about the formation of the theory of mind with a theory of subjectivity, understood as self-consciousness which derives from semiotic cognitive abilities. This text appeals to students, professors and researchers in the field.
This book systematically investigates what follows about meaning in language if current views on the limited, or even redundant, role of linguistic semantics are taken to their radical conclusion. Focusing on conditionals, the book defends a wholly pragmatic, wholly inferential account of meaning – one which foregrounds a reasoning subject’s individual state of mind. The topics discussed in the book include conceptual content, internalism and externalism, the semantics-pragmatics distinction, meaning holism and explicit versus implicit communication. These topics and the author’s analysis of conditionals will allow the reader to engage with some traditional and current research in linguistics, philosophy and psychology.