Semantics

Without assuming arbitrary restrictions on grammar notation at the outset, 'Bare Grammars' aim to provide the most straightforward definitions of the constructions present in human languages, together with a compositional semantics. A simple generative...

Quantification forms a significant aspect of cross-linguistic research into both sentence structure and meaning. This book surveys research in quantification starting with the foundational work in the 1970s. It paints a vivid picture of generalized...

The phenomenon of case has long been a central topic of study in linguistics. While the majority of the literature so far has been on the syntax of case, semantics also has a crucial role to play in how case operates. This book investigates the...

This alphabetic guide introduces terms referring to key concepts in semantics and pragmatics. The study of meaning as it is conveyed through language - the domain of semantics and pragmatics - is one of the central concerns of linguistics, and its...

Human societies name and classify colours in various ways. Knowing this, is it possible to retrieve colour systems from the past? This book presents the basic principles of modern colour semantics, including the recognition of basic vocabulary, subsets,...

Peter Hanks defends a new theory about the nature of propositional content. According to this theory, the basic bearers of representational properties are particular mental or spoken actions. Propositions are types of these actions, which we use to...

This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched. The major principles and systems of C. S. Peirce's ground-breaking theory of signs and signification are now generally well known. Less well...

The extent to which language is inseparable from thought has long been a major subject of debate across linguistics, psychology, philosophy and other disciplines. In this study, Wallace Chafe presents a thought-based theory of language that goes beyond...

Early formal specifications of natural language syntax were quite closely connected to the notion of abstract machines for computing them. More recently, this approach has been superseded by one in which languages are specified in terms of systems of...

Discourse-pragmatic markers are central to everyday language, yet many aspects of their use and functions remain elusive or under-investigated. Bringing together a global team of leading scholars, this volume presents a representative showcase of work...

This book shows that the semantic analysis of modal notions of possibility and necessity can be used to enhance our understanding of the interpretation of reports of belief or emotional state. It introduces intuitive notation and terminology to express...

Politeness is key to all of our relationships and plays a fundamental part in the way we communicate with each other and the way we define ourselves. It is not limited only to conventional aspects of linguistic etiquette, but encompasses all types of...

Discourse markers constitute an important part of linguistic communication, and research on this phenomenon has been a thriving field of study over the past three decades. However, a problem that has plagued this research is that these markers exhibit a...

The book presents a survey of the studies of metonymy in various aspects of language from the cognitive linguistic perspective. It discusses the role of metonymy not only in the traditional domain of semantics but also in morphology, linguistic...

This handbook offers an in depth and comprehensive state of the art survey of the linguistic domains of modality and mood. An international team of experts in the field examines the full range of methodological and theoretical approaches to the many...

This book covers the key terms, concepts, thinkers and texts in semantics that students in linguistics and language studies will encounter. "Key Terms in Semantics" explains the all the terms and concepts in semantics which students on...

French is a syntactically interesting language, with aspects of its word order and clause structure triggering a variety of important developments in syntactic theory. This is a concise and accessible guide to the syntax of Modern French, providing a...

Imperative sentences usually occur in speech acts such as orders, requests, and pleas. However, they are also used to give advice, and to grant permission, and are sometimes found in advertisements, good wishes and conditional constructions. Yet, the...

This is the eleventh volume in Professor M.A.K. Halliday's Collected Works. Taken together, they have shown the sizeable international interest across a number of disciplines in the systemic functional linguistics framework. It is applicable to all...

An accessible and thorough introduction to implicatures, a key topic in all frameworks of pragmatics. Starting with a definition of the various types of implicatures in Gricean, neo-Gricean and post-Gricean pragmatics, the book covers many important...

How are humorous meanings generated and interpreted? Understanding a joke involves knowledge of the language code (a matter mostly of semantics) and background knowledge necessary for making the inferences to get the joke (a matter of pragmatics). This...

Meaning in the Media addresses the issue of how we should respond to competing claims about meaning put forward in confrontations between people or organisations in highly charged circumstances such as bitter public controversies and expensive legal...

Chapter 1 of this text introduces the notion of dynamic semantics and discusses, in detail, the phenomena that have been used to motivate it, such as "donkey" sentences and adverbs of quantification. The second chapter explores in greater depth...

Irony is an intriguing topic, central to the study of meaning in language. This book provides an introduction to the pragmatics of irony. It surveys key work carried out on irony in a range of disciplines such as semantics, pragmatics, philosophy and...

Scholars of language ideology have encouraged us to reflect on and explore where social categories come from, how they have been reproduced, and whether and to what extent they are relevant to everyday interactional practices. Taking up on these issues,...

Taking as its starting point what is sometimes called 'the prison house of language' - the widespread feeling that language falls terribly short when it comes to articulating the rich and disparate contents of the human mental tapestry - this book sets...

This pioneering study combines insights from philosophy and linguistics to develop a novel framework for theorizing about linguistic meaning and the role of context in interpretation. A key innovation is to introduce explicit representations of context -...

How does a listener understand a sarcastic 'That was a wonderful speech' when the words point to a positive review? Why do students of introductory logic interpret 'Some cabs are yellow' as 'Not all cabs are yellow' when the meaning of 'some' is...

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...

Korda's famous photograph of Che Guevara titled the "Guerrillero Heroico" has been reproduced, modified and remixed countless times since it was taken on March 5, 1960, in Havana, Cuba. This book looks again at this well-known mass-produced...

Languages around the world organise their lexicons, or vocabularies, in a myriad of different ways. This book is a celebration of global linguistic diversity, bringing together fascinating cases from a wide range of languages to explore how and why this...

Corpus linguistics is a long-established method which uses authentic language data, stored in extensive computer corpora, as the basis for linguistic research. Moving away from the traditional intuitive approach to linguistics, which used made-up...

Over the past several decades, linguistic theorizing of tense, aspect, and mood (TAM), along with an intensely growing body of crosslinguistic studies, have revealed complexity in the data that challenges traditional distinctions and treatments of these...

This book steers a middle course between two opposing conceptions that currently dominate the field of semantics, the logical and cognitive approaches. Patrick Duffley brings to light the inadequacies of both of these frameworks, arguing that linguistic...

Bringing together work by leading scholars in relevance theory, this volume showcases cutting-edge research within the theory, and demonstrates its influence across a range of fields including linguistics, pragmatics, philosophy of language, literary...

General extenders are phrases like 'or something', 'and everything', 'and things (like that)', 'and stuff (like that)', and 'and so on'. Although they are an everyday feature of spoken language, are crucial in successful interpersonal communication, and...

To achieve successful communication, it is crucial to say clearly what we mean, but, at the same time, we need to pay attention to the form of our utterances, to avoid misunderstandings and the risk of offending our interlocutors. To avoid these...

Propositional attitude reports are sentences built around clause-embedding psychological verbs, like Kim believes that it's raining or Kim wants it to rain. These interact in many intricate ways with a wide variety of semantically relevant grammatical...

Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday (1925-2018) was an iconic figure in the field of linguistics and the pioneer responsible for the development of systemic functional linguistics (SFL). The impact of his work extends beyond linguistics, into the study...

This volume pushes forward research on (im)politeness by focusing on interpersonal interaction's cultural, digital and emotional aspects. With contributions by established and emerging scholars in the field, this collection explores and expounds, with...