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Approaches to Meaning
The basic claims of traditional truth-conditional semantics are that the semantic interpretation of a sentence is connected to the truth of that sentence in a situation, and that the meaning of the sentence is derived compositionally from the semantic values meaning of its constituents and the rules that combine them. Both claims have been subject to an intense debate in linguistics and philosophy of language. The original research papers collected in this volume test the boundaries of this classic view from a linguistic and a philosophical point of view by investigating the foundational notions of composition, values and interpretation and their relation to the interfaces to other disciplin...
Introduction to Semantics
This textbook helps undergraduate students of language and linguistics taking their first steps in one of the core areas of grammar, introducing them to the basic ideas, insights, and techniques of contemporary semantic theory. Requiring no special background knowledge, the book starts with everyday observations about word meaning and use and then hightlights the role of structure in the analysis of the meanings of phrases and clauses, zooming in on the fascinating and vexing question of how speakers manage to meaningfully communicate with sentences and texts they have never come across before. At the same time, the reader becomes acquainted with the modern, functionalist characterization of linguistic meaning in terms of reference (extension) and information (intension), and learns to apply technical tools from formal logic to analyzing the meaning of complex linguistic expressions as being composed by the meanings of their parts. Each of the nine main chapters contains a variety of exercises for self-study and classroom use, with model solutions in the appendix. Extensive English examples provide ample illustration.
Prospects for Meaning
Original papers by leading international authors address the most important problem in the philosophy of language, the question of how to assess the prospects of developing a tenable theory of meaning, given the influential sceptical attacks mounted against the concept of meaning by Willard Van Quine and Saul Kripke and their adherents in particular. Thus the texts attempt to answer the fundamental questions – of whether there are meanings, and, if there are, of what they are and of the form a serious philosophical theory of meaning should take.
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Questions in Discourse
The volume Questions in Discourse - Vol. 1 Semantics contains a comprehensive overview of the semantic analysis of questions and their role in structuring discourse, next to a series of in-depth contributions on individual aspects of question meanings. The expert contributions offer novel accounts of semantic phenomena such as negation and biased questions, question embedding, exhaustivity, disjunction in alternative questions, and superlative quantification particles in questions. Some accounts are modelled in the framework of inquisitive semantics, whereas others employ alternative semantics, and yet others point to the discourse-structuring potential of marked questions. All contributions are easily accessible against the background of the general introduction. Together, they give an excellent overview of current trends in question semantics.
Non-Interrogative Subordinate Wh-Clauses
This volume examines subordinate wh-clauses that lack an interrogative interpretation, particularly those in which the wh-word seems to deviate from its literal meaning. These include subordinate manner wh-clauses that have a declarative-like meaning, locative wh-clauses expressing kinds, and headed relatives that serve as recognitional cues, among many others. While regular interrogative embedding has been widely studied in recent years, little is known about the circumstances under which non-interrogative (subordinate) wh-clauses are licensed, nor why some, but not all, wh-phrases can be polyfunctional. The chapters in the book combine the study of cross-linguistic variation in patterns of...
The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Syntax, 8 Volume Set
An invaluable reference tool for students and researchers in theoretical linguistics, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Syntax, Second Edition has been updated to incorporate the last 10 years of syntactic research and expanded to include a wider array of important case studies in the syntax of a broad array of languages. A revised and expanded edition of this invaluable reference tool for students and researchers in linguistics, now incorporating the last 10 years of syntactic research Contains over 120 chapters that explain, analyze, and contextualize important empirical studies within syntax over the last 50 years Charts the development and historiography of syntactic theory with coverage of the most important subdomains of syntax Brings together cutting-edge contributions from a global group of linguists under the editorship of two esteemed syntacticians Provides an essential and unparalleled collection of research within the field of syntax, available both online and across 8 print volumes This work is also available as an online resource at www.companiontosyntax.com
Understanding Meaning and Knowledge Representation
Today, there is a need to develop natural language processing (NLP) systems from deeper linguistic approaches. Although there are many NLP applications which can work without taking into account any linguistic theory, this type of system can only be described as “deceptively intelligent”. On the other hand, however, those computer programs requiring some language comprehension capability should be grounded in a robust linguistic model if they are to display the expected behaviour. The purpose of this book is to examine and discuss recent work in meaning and knowledge representation within theoretical linguistics and cognitive linguistics, particularly research which can be reused to model NLP applications.
Studies in the Composition and Decomposition of Event Predicates
This detailed, perceptive addition to the linguistics literature analyzes the semantic components of event predicates, exploring their fine-grained elements as well as their agency in linguistic processing. The papers go beyond pure semantics to consider their varying influences of event predicates on argument structure, aspect, scalarity, and event structure. The volume shows how advances in the linguistic theory of event predicates, which have spawned Davidsonian and neo-Davidsonian notions of event arguments, in addition to ‘event structure’ frameworks and mereological models for the eventuality domain, have sidelined research on specific sets of entailments that support a typology of event predicates. Addressing this imbalance in the literature, the work also presents evidence indicating a more complex role for scalar structures than currently assumed. It will enrich the work of semanticists, psycholinguists, and syntacticians with a decompositional approach to verb phrase structure.
Modality in Underdescribed Languages
Current semantic fieldwork research has shown that the study of modality cannot be conducted via translation alone, yet much of what we know about modal expressions across the world’s language is still translation-based. This book aims to facilitate the study of modality across more diverse languages and a wider participant base by explaining and illustrating a nuanced set of methods, including storyboards, questionnaires, corpora research, experimental tasks, as well as a discussion of practical semantic fieldwork techniques. The methodological protocols tested and employed by the authors on underdescribed languages - spanning seven different language families - are intended to be applicable as cross-linguistic tools, while also indicating the successes and challenges of their contributions. Expanding the study of modality to a wider set of underdescribed languages will undoubtedly bring new insights into our theoretical understanding of modality and deepen our understanding of a cross-linguistic typology of modal expressions.
