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From Discourse to Logic
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 730

From Discourse to Logic

Preface This book is about semantics and logic. More specifically, it is about the semantics and logic of natural language; and, even more specifically than that, it is about a particular way of dealing with those subjects, known as Discourse Representation Theory, or DRT. DRT is an approach towards natural language semantics which, some thirteen years ago, arose out of attempts to deal with two distinct problems. The first of those was the semantic puzzle that had been brought to contempo rary attention by Geach's notorious "donkey sentences" - sentences like If Pedro owns some donkey, he beats it, in which the anaphoric connection we perceive between the indefinite noun phrase some donkey and the pronoun it may seem to conflict with the existential meaning of the word some. The second problem had to do with tense and aspect. Some languages, for instance French and the other Romance languages, have two morphologically distinct past tenses, a simple past (the French Passe Simple) and a continuous past (the French Imparfait). To articulate precisely what the difference between these tenses is has turned out to be surprisingly difficult.

One-to-many-relations in morphology, syntax, and semantics
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 294

One-to-many-relations in morphology, syntax, and semantics

The standard view of the form-meaning interfaces, as embraced by the great majority of contemporary grammatical frameworks, consists in the assumption that meaning can be associated with grammatical form in a one-to-one correspondence. Under this view, composition is quite straightforward, involving concatenation of form, paired with functional application in meaning. In this book, we discuss linguistic phenomena across several grammatical sub-modules (morphology, syntax, semantics) that apparently pose a problem to the standard view, mapping out the potential for deviation from the ideal of one-to-one correspondences, and develop formal accounts of the range of phenomena. We argue that a co...

Grammatical theory
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 882

Grammatical theory

This book introduces formal grammar theories that play a role in current linguistic theorizing (Phrase Structure Grammar, Transformational Grammar/Government & Binding, Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, Lexical Functional Grammar, Categorial Grammar, Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Construction Grammar, Tree Adjoining Grammar). The key assumptions are explained and it is shown how the respective theory treats arguments and adjuncts, the active/passive alternation, local reorderings, verb placement, and fronting of constituents over long distances. The analyses are explained with German as the object language. The second part of the book compares these approaches with respect to the...

Strategies of Ambiguity
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 318

Strategies of Ambiguity

There has been a growing awareness that ambiguity is not just a necessary evil of the language system resulting, for instance, from its need for economy, or, by contrast, a blessing that allows writers to involve readers in endless games of assigning meaning to a literary text. The present volume contributes to overcoming this alternative by focusing on strategies of ambiguity (and the strategic avoidance of ambiguity) both at the production and the reception end of communication. The authors examine ways in which speakers and hearers may use ambiguous words, structures, references, and situations to pursue communicative ends. For example, the question is asked what it actually means when a ...

History of the Language Sciences / Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaften / Histoire des sciences du langage. 3. Teilband
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 910

History of the Language Sciences / Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaften / Histoire des sciences du langage. 3. Teilband

No detailed description available for "HIST LANGUAGE SCIENCES (KOERNER) 3.TLBD HSK 18.3 E-BOOK".

Archi
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 303

Archi

This book presents a detailed examination of the unusual agreement system of Archi, an endangered language spoken in southern Dagestan (Russia), from the perspective of three different syntactic theories: Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Lexical Functional Grammar, and Minimalism.

Topics in South Slavic Syntax and Semantics
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 292

Topics in South Slavic Syntax and Semantics

This collection of articles presents a variety of approaches to central phenomena in South Slavic syntax and semantics, with an informal introduction by the editors on South Slavic clause structure. Phenomena addressed (treated partly on a language specific basis, partly comparative) include: the structure of the functional field, verb fronting, clitic placement, conjunctions, noun phrase structure, possessives, agreement, and aspectual phenomena.

Foundations of the Formal Sciences II
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 308

Foundations of the Formal Sciences II

"Foundations of the Formal Sciences" (FotFS) is a series of interdisciplinary conferences in mathematics, philosophy, computer science and linguistics. The main goal is to reestablish the traditionally strong links between these areas of research that have been lost in the past decades. The second conference in the series had the subtitle "Applications of Mathematical Logic in Philosophy and Linguistics" and brought speakers from all parts of the Formal Sciences together to give a holistic view of how mathematical methods can improve our philosophical and technical understanding of language and scientific discourse, ranging from the theoretical level up to applications in language recognition software. Audience: This volume is of interest to all formal philosophers and theoretical linguists. In addition to that, logicians interested in the applications of their field and logic students in mathematics, computer science, philosophy and linguistics can use the volume to broaden their knowledge of applications of logic.

Defining Pragmatics
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 349

Defining Pragmatics

Although there is no shortage of definitions for pragmatics the received wisdom is that 'pragmatics' simply cannot be coherently defined. In this groundbreaking book Mira Ariel challenges the prominent definitions of pragmatics, as well as the widely-held assumption that specific topics – implicatures, deixis, speech acts, politeness – naturally and uniformly belong on the pragmatics turf. She reconstitutes the field, defining grammar as a set of conventional codes, and pragmatics as a set of inferences, rationally derived. The book applies this division of labor between codes and inferences to many classical pragmatic phenomena, and even to phenomena considered 'beyond pragmatics'. Surprisingly, although some of these turn out pragmatic, others actually turn out grammatical. Additional intriguing questions addressed in the book include: why is it sometimes difficult to distinguish grammar from pragmatics? Why is there no grand design behind grammar nor behind pragmatics? Are all extragrammatical phenomena pragmatic?

Questions and Epistemic Stance in Contemporary Spoken British English
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 336

Questions and Epistemic Stance in Contemporary Spoken British English

This volume explores a model of epistemic stance, according to which speakers can communicate each single piece of information either as known/certain or uncertain or unknown. It presents a qualitative analysis of extracts from the Spoken British National Corpus 2014 to support the idea that questions come from two distinct epistemic positions: the Unknowing and the Uncertain; this latter ranges along two poles: Not Knowing Whether and Believing. In the epistemic continuum, Unknowing questions express a lack of knowledge and range from open to closed and dual wh-questions. On the other hand, Uncertain questions express a lack of certainty and range from maximum uncertainty (Not Knowing Whether-questions advancing a doubt) to minimum uncertainty (Believing-questions advancing a supposition). Both Unknowing and Uncertain questions can be directed either at the answerer’s Knowing or Believing position, depending on their aim. The volume will appeal to scholars concerned with the topic of question design and epistemic stance from a theoretical and analytical perspective, as well as those interested in applying these findings in their teaching practice.