Language and Meaning

Language and Meaning PDF Author: Betty J Birner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351374044
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 129

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Book Description
Language and Meaning provides a clear, accessible and unique perspective on the philosophical and linguistic question of what it means to mean. Looking at relationships such as those between literal and non-literal meanings, linguistic form and meaning, and language and thought, this volume tackles the issues involved in what we mean and how we convey it. Divided into five easy-to-read chapters, it features: Broad coverage of semantic, pragmatic and philosophical approaches, providing the reader with a balanced and comprehensive overview of the topic; Frequent examples to demonstrate how meaning is perceived and manipulated in everyday discourse, including the importance of context, scientific studies of human language, and theories of pragmatics; Topics of debate and key points of current theories, including references to ongoing controversies in the field; Annotated further reading, allowing students to explore topics in more detail. Aimed at undergraduate students with little or no prior knowledge of linguistics, this book is essential reading for those studying this topic for the first time.

Language and Meaning

Language and Meaning PDF Author: Betty J Birner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351374044
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 129

Get Book Here

Book Description
Language and Meaning provides a clear, accessible and unique perspective on the philosophical and linguistic question of what it means to mean. Looking at relationships such as those between literal and non-literal meanings, linguistic form and meaning, and language and thought, this volume tackles the issues involved in what we mean and how we convey it. Divided into five easy-to-read chapters, it features: Broad coverage of semantic, pragmatic and philosophical approaches, providing the reader with a balanced and comprehensive overview of the topic; Frequent examples to demonstrate how meaning is perceived and manipulated in everyday discourse, including the importance of context, scientific studies of human language, and theories of pragmatics; Topics of debate and key points of current theories, including references to ongoing controversies in the field; Annotated further reading, allowing students to explore topics in more detail. Aimed at undergraduate students with little or no prior knowledge of linguistics, this book is essential reading for those studying this topic for the first time.

Language and Meaning in the Age of Modernism

Language and Meaning in the Age of Modernism PDF Author: James McElvenny
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474425046
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
This book explores the influential currents in the philosophy of language and linguistics of the first half of the twentieth century, from the perspective of the English scholar C. K. Ogden (1889 - 1957). It reveals links between early analytic philosophy, semiotics and linguistics in a crucial period of their respective histories.

Meaning, Use, and Interpretation of Language

Meaning, Use, and Interpretation of Language PDF Author: Rainer Bäuerle
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110852829
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 500

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Book Description


The Meaning of Language

The Meaning of Language PDF Author: Hans Götzsche
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527521060
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
The Meaning of Language illustrates the diversity of approaches in linguistics. The volume revolves around two main chapters authored by two internationally acknowledged Scandinavian scholars, Hans Basbøll and Stig Eliasson. Basbøll’s contribution is the most detailed and coherent English-language presentation of the pioneering Danish 18th century linguist Jens Pedersen Høysgaard and his work, and Eliasson explores the intricacy of the issue of whether morphology can be borrowed between languages and the mechanisms of actual borrowings. The other contributions illustrate which topics may be taken up by language scholars today, from metaphor, regional phonology, morphology and syntax, language learning, discourse analysis, intensifier semantics, and Indo-European, to the interface between language and logic. The approaches invoke a wide spectrum of theoretical models and assumptions.

Where Words Get their Meaning

Where Words Get their Meaning PDF Author: Marianna Bolognesi
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027260427
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
Words are not just labels for conceptual categories. Words construct conceptual categories, frame situations and influence behavior. Where do they get their meaning? This book describes how words acquire their meaning. The author argues that mechanisms based on associations, pattern detection, and feature matching processes explain how words acquire their meaning from experience and from language alike. Such mechanisms are summarized by the distributional hypothesis, a computational theory of meaning originally applied to word occurrences only, and hereby extended to extra-linguistic contexts. By arguing in favor of the cognitive foundations of the distributional hypothesis, which suggests that words that appear in similar contexts have similar meaning, this book offers a theoretical account for word meaning construction and extension in first and second language that bridges empirical findings from cognitive and computer sciences. Plain language and illustrations accompany the text, making this book accessible to a multidisciplinary academic audience.

The Meaning of Language, second edition

The Meaning of Language, second edition PDF Author: Heidi Savage
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262535734
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 413

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Book Description
A new edition of a comprehensive introduction to the philosophy of language, substantially updated and reorganized. The philosophy of language aims to answer a broad range of questions about the nature of language, including “what is a language?” and “what is the source of meaning?” This accessible comprehensive introduction to the philosophy of language begins with the most basic properties of language and only then proceeds to the phenomenon of meaning. The second edition has been significantly expanded and reorganized, putting the original content in a contemporary context and offering substantial new material, with extended discussions and entirely new chapters. After establishing the basics, the book discusses general criteria for an adequate theory of meaning, takes a first pass at describing meaning at an abstract level, and distinguishes between meaning and other related phenomena. Building on this, the book then addresses various specific theories of meaning, beginning with early foundational theories and proceeding to more contemporary ones. New to this edition are expanded discussions of Chomsky's work and compositional semantics, among other topics, and new chapters on such subjects as propositions, Montague grammar, and contemporary theories of language. Each chapter has technical terms in bold, followed by definitions, and offers a list of main points and suggested further readings. The book is suitable for use in undergraduate courses in philosophy and linguistics. Some background in philosophy is assumed, but knowledge of philosophy of language is not necessary.

Meaning and the Structure of Language

Meaning and the Structure of Language PDF Author: Wallace L. Chafe
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Language, Meaning and the Law

Language, Meaning and the Law PDF Author: Christopher Hutton
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748633529
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Language, Meaning and the Law offers an accessible, critical guide to debates about linguistic meaning and interpretation in relation to legal language. Law is an ideal domain for considering fundamental questions relating to how we assign meanings to words, understand and comment on texts, and deal with socially and ideologically significant questions of interpretation. The book argues that theoretical issues of concern to linguists, philosophers, literary theorists and others are illuminated by the demands of the legal context, since law is driven by the need for practical solutions and for determinate outcomes based on explicit reasoning. Topics covered include: the relationship of linguistics to legal theory, indeterminacy and statutory interpretation, the theory and practice of using dictionaries in law, defamation and language in the public sphere, and the distinction between perjury and deception. This book does not assume specialist knowledge of the field, and is designed as a self-contained, advanced introduction to a fascinating area of study. The reader will gain an overall insight into issues and debates about meaning and interpretation, as well as an understanding of how these questions are shaped by the legal context.

Analyzing meaning

Analyzing meaning PDF Author: Paul R. Kroeger
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3961100349
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 502

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Book Description
{This book provides an introduction to the study of meaning in human language, from a linguistic perspective. It covers a fairly broad range of topics, including lexical semantics, compositional semantics, and pragmatics. The chapters are organized into six units: (1) Foundational concepts; (2) Word meanings; (3) Implicature (including indirect speech acts); (4) Compositional semantics; (5) Modals, conditionals, and causation; (6) Tense & aspect. Most of the chapters include exercises which can be used for class discussion and/or homework assignments, and each chapter contains references for additional reading on the topics covered. As the title indicates, this book is truly an INTRODUCTION: it provides a solid foundation which will prepare students to take more advanced and specialized courses in semantics and/or pragmatics. It is also intended as a reference for fieldworkers doing primary research on under-documented languages, to help them write grammatical descriptions that deal carefully and clearly with semantic issues. The approach adopted here is largely descriptive and non-formal (or, in some places, semi-formal), although some basic logical notation is introduced. The book is written at level which should be appropriate for advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate students. It presupposes some previous coursework in linguistics, but does not presuppose any background in formal logic or set theory.

Keeping Those Words in Mind

Keeping Those Words in Mind PDF Author: Max Louwerse
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1633886514
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
How can humans keep thousands of words in mind and have no difficulty understanding trillions of sentences? The answer to this question might lie in parents teaching their children language skills, or in in the human brain, which may be equipped with a language instinct or maybe in impressive memory skills that link words to their perceptual information. Undoubtedly, there is some truth to some of these explanations. But one answer – perhaps the most important answer – has been largely ignored. Keeping Those Words in Mind tries to remedy this oversight. Linguist and cognitive psychologist Max Louwerse, PhD. argues that understanding language is not just possible because of memory, brains, environment and computation, but because of the patterns in the sequence of sounds and words themselves.He demonstrates that what seems to be an arbitrary communication system, with arbitrary characters and sounds that become words, and arbitrary meanings for those words, actually is a well-organized system that has evolved over tens of thousands of years to make communication as efficient as it is. What is needed for humans to acquire language, is for humans to recognize and discover the patterns in our communication system. By examining how our brains process language and find patterns, the intricacies of the language system itself, and even scientific breakthroughs in computer science and artificial intelligence, Keeping Those Words in Mind brings a brand new and interdisciplinary explanation for our ability to extract meaning from language.