Author: Irina T. Pandarova
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027252831
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 266
Book Description
This book offers a fresh take on several long-standing issues relating to the (non-)truth-conditional interpretation of epistemic, evidential, hearsay and attitudinal sentence adverbials. Drawing on a wealth of data from English and German, it shows for the first time that all four adverbial classes can have both truth-conditional and non-truth-conditional (parenthetical) readings. A novel account is presented according to which (non-)truth-conditional readings may arise at either the syntactic or the pragmatic level. Couched in relevance theory, the book also re-examines the explicature and illocutionary status of the adverbial qualification and the qualified proposition, and refines the notions of pointhood and at-issueness to provide an original information-structural analysis applicable to not just sentence adverbials but a range of other propositional qualifiers. Finally, the investigation identifies five factors affecting (non-)truth-conditional interpretation: linear position, prosody, the semantics of the adverbial, its information-structural properties and the wider context. The book will be of interest to those interested in relevance theory, the semantics/pragmatics interface, the syntax/pragmatics interface and information structure, as well as for syntacticians, semanticists and pragmatists interested in sentence adverbials, other propositional qualifiers and parentheticality, syntactic and interpretational.
Revisiting Sentence Adverbials and Relevance
Author: Irina T. Pandarova
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027252831
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 266
Book Description
This book offers a fresh take on several long-standing issues relating to the (non-)truth-conditional interpretation of epistemic, evidential, hearsay and attitudinal sentence adverbials. Drawing on a wealth of data from English and German, it shows for the first time that all four adverbial classes can have both truth-conditional and non-truth-conditional (parenthetical) readings. A novel account is presented according to which (non-)truth-conditional readings may arise at either the syntactic or the pragmatic level. Couched in relevance theory, the book also re-examines the explicature and illocutionary status of the adverbial qualification and the qualified proposition, and refines the notions of pointhood and at-issueness to provide an original information-structural analysis applicable to not just sentence adverbials but a range of other propositional qualifiers. Finally, the investigation identifies five factors affecting (non-)truth-conditional interpretation: linear position, prosody, the semantics of the adverbial, its information-structural properties and the wider context. The book will be of interest to those interested in relevance theory, the semantics/pragmatics interface, the syntax/pragmatics interface and information structure, as well as for syntacticians, semanticists and pragmatists interested in sentence adverbials, other propositional qualifiers and parentheticality, syntactic and interpretational.
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027252831
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 266
Book Description
This book offers a fresh take on several long-standing issues relating to the (non-)truth-conditional interpretation of epistemic, evidential, hearsay and attitudinal sentence adverbials. Drawing on a wealth of data from English and German, it shows for the first time that all four adverbial classes can have both truth-conditional and non-truth-conditional (parenthetical) readings. A novel account is presented according to which (non-)truth-conditional readings may arise at either the syntactic or the pragmatic level. Couched in relevance theory, the book also re-examines the explicature and illocutionary status of the adverbial qualification and the qualified proposition, and refines the notions of pointhood and at-issueness to provide an original information-structural analysis applicable to not just sentence adverbials but a range of other propositional qualifiers. Finally, the investigation identifies five factors affecting (non-)truth-conditional interpretation: linear position, prosody, the semantics of the adverbial, its information-structural properties and the wider context. The book will be of interest to those interested in relevance theory, the semantics/pragmatics interface, the syntax/pragmatics interface and information structure, as well as for syntacticians, semanticists and pragmatists interested in sentence adverbials, other propositional qualifiers and parentheticality, syntactic and interpretational.
Voices Past and Present - Studies of Involved, Speech-related and Spoken Texts
Author: Ewa Jonsson
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027260648
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 364
Book Description
This volume provides a diachronic and synchronic overview of linguistic variability and change in involved, speech-related and spoken texts in English. While previous works on the topic have focused on more limited time periods, this book covers data from the 16th century up to the present day. The studies offer new insights into historical and present-day corpus pragmatics by identifying and exploring features of orality in a variety of registers. For readers who are new to the field, the range of approaches will provide a helpful overview; for readers who are already familiar with the field, the volume will shed light on the complexity of factors such as register, sociolinguistic variability and language attitude, thus making it a useful resource and stepping stone for further exploration. The volume celebrates the groundbreaking contributions of Professor Merja Kytö in making accessible speech-related corpus material and leading the way in its exploration.
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027260648
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 364
Book Description
This volume provides a diachronic and synchronic overview of linguistic variability and change in involved, speech-related and spoken texts in English. While previous works on the topic have focused on more limited time periods, this book covers data from the 16th century up to the present day. The studies offer new insights into historical and present-day corpus pragmatics by identifying and exploring features of orality in a variety of registers. For readers who are new to the field, the range of approaches will provide a helpful overview; for readers who are already familiar with the field, the volume will shed light on the complexity of factors such as register, sociolinguistic variability and language attitude, thus making it a useful resource and stepping stone for further exploration. The volume celebrates the groundbreaking contributions of Professor Merja Kytö in making accessible speech-related corpus material and leading the way in its exploration.
Adverbials in Use
Author: Laure Sarda
Publisher: Presses universitaires de Louvain
ISBN: 2875583069
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 326
Book Description
Contributions in this volume will lead to a better understanding of the complex interplay of competing motivations affecting the use of adverbials in...
Publisher: Presses universitaires de Louvain
ISBN: 2875583069
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 326
Book Description
Contributions in this volume will lead to a better understanding of the complex interplay of competing motivations affecting the use of adverbials in...
Evidentials and Relevance
Author: Elly Ifantidou
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9781588110329
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 252
Book Description
This book uses Sperber and Wilson s Relevance Theory to show how evidential expressions can be analysed in a unified semantic/pragmatic framework. The first part surveys general linguistic work on evidentials, presents speech-act theory and examines Grice s theory of meaning and communication with emphasis on three main issues: for linguistically encoded evidentials, are they truth-conditional or non-truth-conditional, and do they contribute to explicit or implicit communication? For pragmatically inferred evidentials, is there a pragmatic framework in which they can be adequately accounted for? The second part examines those assumptions of Relevance theory that bear on the study of evidentials, offers an account of pragmatically inferred evidentials and introduces three distinctions relevant to the issues discussed in this book: between explicit and implicit communication, truth-conditional and non-truth-conditional meaning, and conceptual and procedural meaning. These distinctions are applied to a variety of linguistically encoded evidentials, including sentence adverbials, parenthetical constructions and hearsay particles. This book offers convincing evidence that not all evidentials behave similarly with respect to the above distinctions and offers an explanation for why this is so.
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9781588110329
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 252
Book Description
This book uses Sperber and Wilson s Relevance Theory to show how evidential expressions can be analysed in a unified semantic/pragmatic framework. The first part surveys general linguistic work on evidentials, presents speech-act theory and examines Grice s theory of meaning and communication with emphasis on three main issues: for linguistically encoded evidentials, are they truth-conditional or non-truth-conditional, and do they contribute to explicit or implicit communication? For pragmatically inferred evidentials, is there a pragmatic framework in which they can be adequately accounted for? The second part examines those assumptions of Relevance theory that bear on the study of evidentials, offers an account of pragmatically inferred evidentials and introduces three distinctions relevant to the issues discussed in this book: between explicit and implicit communication, truth-conditional and non-truth-conditional meaning, and conceptual and procedural meaning. These distinctions are applied to a variety of linguistically encoded evidentials, including sentence adverbials, parenthetical constructions and hearsay particles. This book offers convincing evidence that not all evidentials behave similarly with respect to the above distinctions and offers an explanation for why this is so.
Revisiting Modality
Author: Vítor Míguez
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 902724698X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 254
Book Description
This book presents the first in-depth investigation of modality in Galician linguistics, offering a theoretical discussion of modal categories and a fine-grained description of epistemic adverbs. The first half of the monograph deconstructs the most relevant approaches to modal categories and shows how the traditional concept of modality is a problematic notion, how it relates to other concepts such as evidentiality and mitigation, and how it ought to be conceived of in order to become a more useful instrument for linguistic analysis. A new way of understanding modality is explored and illustrated through Galician examples. The second half of the book zooms in on six epistemic adverbs, which are exhaustively studied from both a formal and a functional perspective. Combining a quantitative and a qualitative perspective, the book shows that adverbs make up a rich semantic scale and establishes several factors that condition their occurrence in discourse, challenging previous conceptions of this grammatical domain.
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 902724698X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 254
Book Description
This book presents the first in-depth investigation of modality in Galician linguistics, offering a theoretical discussion of modal categories and a fine-grained description of epistemic adverbs. The first half of the monograph deconstructs the most relevant approaches to modal categories and shows how the traditional concept of modality is a problematic notion, how it relates to other concepts such as evidentiality and mitigation, and how it ought to be conceived of in order to become a more useful instrument for linguistic analysis. A new way of understanding modality is explored and illustrated through Galician examples. The second half of the book zooms in on six epistemic adverbs, which are exhaustively studied from both a formal and a functional perspective. Combining a quantitative and a qualitative perspective, the book shows that adverbs make up a rich semantic scale and establishes several factors that condition their occurrence in discourse, challenging previous conceptions of this grammatical domain.
Metarepresentation
Author: Eun-Ju Noh
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027250841
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 266
Book Description
Eun-Ju Noh's book provides a close look at linguistic metarepresentation showing how beliefs, utterances, and propositions are represented and how they are inferred. The author explains how metarepresentation works in various types of uses: quotations, negation, echo questions, and conditionals in terms of truth conditions and pragmatic enrichment. Ample examples are provided from the English language. The relevance-theory approach gives room for extralinguistic parameters to be considered, and suggestions are made for further research in cross-linguistic studies and metarepresentation.
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027250841
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 266
Book Description
Eun-Ju Noh's book provides a close look at linguistic metarepresentation showing how beliefs, utterances, and propositions are represented and how they are inferred. The author explains how metarepresentation works in various types of uses: quotations, negation, echo questions, and conditionals in terms of truth conditions and pragmatic enrichment. Ample examples are provided from the English language. The relevance-theory approach gives room for extralinguistic parameters to be considered, and suggestions are made for further research in cross-linguistic studies and metarepresentation.
The Cambridge Handbook of Pragmatics
Author: Keith Allan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139501895
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 967
Book Description
Pragmatics is the study of human communication: the choices speakers make to express their intended meaning and the kinds of inferences that hearers draw from an utterance in the context of its use. This Handbook surveys pragmatics from different perspectives, presenting the main theories in pragmatic research, incorporating seminal research as well as cutting-edge solutions. It addresses questions of rational and empirical research methods, what counts as an adequate and successful pragmatic theory, and how to go about answering problems raised in pragmatic theory. In the fast-developing field of pragmatics, this Handbook fills the gap in the market for a one-stop resource to the wide scope of today's research and the intricacy of the many theoretical debates. It is an authoritative guide for graduate students and researchers with its focus on the areas and theories that will mark progress in pragmatic research in the future.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139501895
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 967
Book Description
Pragmatics is the study of human communication: the choices speakers make to express their intended meaning and the kinds of inferences that hearers draw from an utterance in the context of its use. This Handbook surveys pragmatics from different perspectives, presenting the main theories in pragmatic research, incorporating seminal research as well as cutting-edge solutions. It addresses questions of rational and empirical research methods, what counts as an adequate and successful pragmatic theory, and how to go about answering problems raised in pragmatic theory. In the fast-developing field of pragmatics, this Handbook fills the gap in the market for a one-stop resource to the wide scope of today's research and the intricacy of the many theoretical debates. It is an authoritative guide for graduate students and researchers with its focus on the areas and theories that will mark progress in pragmatic research in the future.
Relevance, Pragmatics and Interpretation
Author: Kate Scott
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108418635
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 327
Book Description
Showcases recent research by leading scholars working within the relevance-theoretic pragmatics framework.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108418635
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 327
Book Description
Showcases recent research by leading scholars working within the relevance-theoretic pragmatics framework.
Parentheticals
Author: Nicole Dehé
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027233707
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 332
Book Description
This volume offers a unique collection of articles investigating the often neglected phenomenon of parentheticals, which are commonly seen as expressions interrupting the linear structure of a host utterance, but lacking a structural relation to it. The book provides an up-to-date introduction to the subject, as well as a range of research articles addressing questions including the syntactic link between parenthetical and frame utterance, the relation between syntactic and prosodic form, the usage and interpretation of parentheticals, and many more. It embraces research findings from different European languages (English, German, Dutch, Romance) and covers an array of forms of syntactic interpolations (from one-word parentheticals to clausal) and a range of methodologies, including empirical research, corpus research, and theoretical analyses. The collection underlines the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to a multi-faceted phenomenon such as parentheticals.
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027233707
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 332
Book Description
This volume offers a unique collection of articles investigating the often neglected phenomenon of parentheticals, which are commonly seen as expressions interrupting the linear structure of a host utterance, but lacking a structural relation to it. The book provides an up-to-date introduction to the subject, as well as a range of research articles addressing questions including the syntactic link between parenthetical and frame utterance, the relation between syntactic and prosodic form, the usage and interpretation of parentheticals, and many more. It embraces research findings from different European languages (English, German, Dutch, Romance) and covers an array of forms of syntactic interpolations (from one-word parentheticals to clausal) and a range of methodologies, including empirical research, corpus research, and theoretical analyses. The collection underlines the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to a multi-faceted phenomenon such as parentheticals.
Creativity and Convention
Author: Rosa E. Vega Moreno
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027253996
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Book Description
This book offers a pragmatic account of the interpretation of everyday metaphorical and idiomatic expressions. Using the framework of Relevance Theory, it reanalyses the results of recent experimental research on figurative utterances and provides a novel account of the interplay of creativity and convention in figurative interpretation, showing how features 'emerge' during metaphor comprehension and how literal meaning contributes to idiom comprehension. The central claim is that the mind is rather selective when processing information, and that in the pragmatic interpretation of both literal and figurative utterances, this selectivity often results in the creation of new ('ad hoc') concepts or the standardization of pragmatic routines. With this approach, the comprehension of metaphors and idioms requires no special pragmatic principles or procedures not required for the interpretation of ordinary literal utterances, but follows from an automatic tendency towards selective processing which is itself a by-product of Sperber and Wilson's Cognitive Principle of Relevance.
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027253996
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Book Description
This book offers a pragmatic account of the interpretation of everyday metaphorical and idiomatic expressions. Using the framework of Relevance Theory, it reanalyses the results of recent experimental research on figurative utterances and provides a novel account of the interplay of creativity and convention in figurative interpretation, showing how features 'emerge' during metaphor comprehension and how literal meaning contributes to idiom comprehension. The central claim is that the mind is rather selective when processing information, and that in the pragmatic interpretation of both literal and figurative utterances, this selectivity often results in the creation of new ('ad hoc') concepts or the standardization of pragmatic routines. With this approach, the comprehension of metaphors and idioms requires no special pragmatic principles or procedures not required for the interpretation of ordinary literal utterances, but follows from an automatic tendency towards selective processing which is itself a by-product of Sperber and Wilson's Cognitive Principle of Relevance.