The Semantics of Determiners (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar)

The Semantics of Determiners (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar)
Author: Johan Van Der Auwera
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2014-01-21
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 131793346X

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This book is a collection of linguistic and philosophical papers dealing with the semantic problems of determiners. The language under investigation is mostly English, although a few papers deal with French and German, and, to a lesser extent, with Dutch, Polish, Russian and Hebrew. The majority of the contributions focus on the semantics of the definite and indefinite articles, leading into discussions of anaphoricness, specificness, opacity and transparency, referentiality and attributiveness and genericness. The relation of the determiners to other parts of grammar, in particular relativisation and predication, is also investigated. Some attention is also given to quantifiers. In the spirit of pluralism, there is no single paradigm unifying all the papers, rather, the volume reflects elements of the Extended Standard Theory, Generative Semantics, Montague Grammar, (Gricean) Pragmatics and Speech Act Theory.

The Semantics of Determiners (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar)

The Semantics of Determiners (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar)
Author: Johan Van Der Auwera
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2014-01-21
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1317933478

Download The Semantics of Determiners (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar) Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

This book is a collection of linguistic and philosophical papers dealing with the semantic problems of determiners. The language under investigation is mostly English, although a few papers deal with French and German, and, to a lesser extent, with Dutch, Polish, Russian and Hebrew. The majority of the contributions focus on the semantics of the definite and indefinite articles, leading into discussions of anaphoricness, specificness, opacity and transparency, referentiality and attributiveness and genericness. The relation of the determiners to other parts of grammar, in particular relativisation and predication, is also investigated. Some attention is also given to quantifiers. In the spirit of pluralism, there is no single paradigm unifying all the papers, rather, the volume reflects elements of the Extended Standard Theory, Generative Semantics, Montague Grammar, (Gricean) Pragmatics and Speech Act Theory.

Determiners

Determiners
Author: Jila Ghomeshi
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2009
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 902725530X

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This volume brings together recent work on the formal and interpretational properties of determiners across a variety of typologically and geographically unrelated languages. It seeks to answer the core question of modern linguistic theory: Which properties of languages are universal and which are variable? In recent theorizing, much of language variation is argued to stem from differences in the properties of features associated with functional heads. As such, this volume can be viewed as a case study of one such category: the determiner (D). The contributions all investigate the status of D as a language universal by examining the language-specific syntactic and semantic properties associated with this category. This volume will appeal to researchers and students in syntax and semantics, as well as to those who have more a specific interest in determiners and noun phrases.

The Semantics of Grammar

The Semantics of Grammar
Author: Anna Wierzbicka
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 632
Release: 1988-01-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027230196

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"The semantics of grammar" presents a radically semantic approach to syntax and morphology. It offers a methodology which makes it possible to demonstrate, on an empirical basis, that syntax is neither "autonomous" nor "arbitrary," but that it follows from "semantics." It is shown that every grammatical construction encodes a certain semantic structure, which can be revealed and rigorously stated, so that the meanings encoded in grammar can be compared in a precise and illuminating way, within one language and across language boundaries. The author develops a semantic metalanguage based on lexical universals or near-universals (and, ultimately, on a system of universal semantic primitives), and shows that the same semantic metalanguage can be used for explicating lexical, grammatical and pragmatic aspects of language and thus offers a method for an integrated linguistic description based on semantic foundations. Analyzing data from a number of different languages (including English, Russian and Japanese) the author explores the notion of ethnosyntax and, via semantics, links syntax and morphology with culture. She attemps to demonstrate that the use of a semantic metalanguage based on lexical universals makes it possible to rephrase the Humboldt-Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in such a way that it can be tested and treated as a program for empirical research.

Routledge Library Editions: Linguistics Mini-Set B: Grammar

Routledge Library Editions: Linguistics Mini-Set B: Grammar
Author: Routledge
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013-11-21
Genre: Grammar, Comparative and general
ISBN: 9780415717021

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RLE: Linguistics Mini-set B has brought together a collection of essential Grammar titles, ranging from Basic Word Order to Existential Sentences, from The Pragmatics of Style to The Semantics of Determiners. These books, some long out of print, form a classic collection by some of the world's leading linguists.

Grammar, Meaning and Pragmatics

Grammar, Meaning and Pragmatics
Author: Frank Brisard
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2009-08-11
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027289182

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The ten volumes of Handbook of Pragmatics Highlights focus on the most salient topics in the field of pragmatics, thus dividing its wide interdisciplinary spectrum in a transparent and manageable way. While other volumes select philosophical, cognitive, cultural, social, variational, interactional, or discursive points of view, this fifth volume looks at the field of linguistic pragmatics from a primarily grammatical angle. That is, it asks in which particular sense a variety of older and more recent functional (rather than generative) models of grammar relate to the study of language in use: how this affects their general outlook on language structure, whether issues of language use inform the very makeup of these models or are merely included as possible research themes, and how far the actual integration of pragmatics ultimately goes (is it a module/layer or is the model truly “usage-based”?). Each of the authors presenting these models has taken systematic care to highlight the relevant problems and focus on the implications of considering pragmatic phenomena from the point of view of grammar. Furthermore, a limited number of chapters deal with traditional topics in the grammatical literature, and specifically those which are called pragmatic because they either are not strictly concerned with truth (semantics), or receive their (truth) value only from an interaction with context. In the introduction, these theories and topics are set up against the historical background of a gradually changing attitude, on the part of grammarians, towards questions of linguistic knowledge and behavior, and the role of learning in their relationship.

Determiners and Quantifiers

Determiners and Quantifiers
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2021-11-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9004473327

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This volume explores the interface between morphosyntax and semantics-pragmatics in the domain of referential and quantificational nominal expressions, by means of synchronic and diachronic case studies from Romance and Germanic languages.

Understanding Semantics

Understanding Semantics
Author: Sebastian Loebner
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2014-04-23
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1134647158

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This series provides approachable, yet authoritative, introductions to all the major topics in linguistics. Ideal for students with little or no prior knowledge of linguistics, each book carefully explains the basics, emphasising understanding of the essential notions rather than arguing for a particular theoretical position. Understanding Semantics offers a complete introduction to linguistic semantics. The book takes a step-by-step approach, starting with the basic concepts and moving through the central questions to examine the methods and results of the science of linguistic meaning. Understanding Semantics unites the treatment of a broad scale of phenomena using data from different languages with a thorough investigation of major theoretical perspectives. It leads the reader from their intuitive knowledge of meaning to a deeper understanding of the use of scientific reasoning in the study of language as a communicative tool, of the nature of linguistic meaning, and of the scope and limitations of linguistic semantics. Ideal as a first textbook in semantics for undergraduate students of linguistics, this book is also recommended for students of literature, philosophy, psychology and cognitive science.

Formal Semantics and Pragmatics for Natural Languages

Formal Semantics and Pragmatics for Natural Languages
Author: Franz Guenthner
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 396
Release: 1979
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN:

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The essays in this collection are the outgrowth of a workshop, held in June 1976, on formal approaches to the semantics and pragmatics of natural languages. They document in an astoundingly uniform way the develop ments in the formal analysis of natural languages since the late sixties. The avowed aim of the' workshop was in fact to assess the progress made in the application of formal methods to semantics, to confront different approaches to essentially the same problems on the one hand, and, on the other, to show the way in relating semantic and pragmatic explanations of linguistic phenomena. Several of these papers can in fact be regarded as attempts to close the 'semiotic circle' by bringing together the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties of certain constructions in an explanatory framework thereby making it more than obvious that these three components of an integrated linguistic theory cannot be as neatly separated as one would have liked to believe. In other words, not only can we not elaborate a syntactic description of (a fragment of) a language and then proceed to the semantics (as Montague pointed out already forcefully in 1968), we cannot hope to achieve an adequate integrated syntax and semantics without paying heed to the pragmatic aspects of the constructions involved. The behavior of polarity items, 'quantifiers' like any, conditionals or even logical particles like and and or in non-indicative sentences is clear-cut evidence for the need to let each component of the grammar inform the other.

Formal Semantics

Formal Semantics
Author: Paul H. Portner
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 496
Release: 2008-04-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 047075818X

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Formal Semantics: The Essential Readings is a collection of seminal papers that have shaped the field of formal semantics in linguistics.