Meaning - Betty J. Birner

Meaning

Semantics, Pragmatics, Cognition

(Autor)

Buch | Hardcover
302 Seiten
2023
Routledge (Verlag)
978-0-367-02880-0 (ISBN)
155,85 inkl. MwSt
Meaning addresses the fundamental question of human language interaction: what it is to mean, and how we communicate our meanings to others. Experienced textbook writer and eminent researcher Betty J. Birner gives balanced coverage to semantics and pragmatics, emphasizing interactions between the two.
Meaning addresses the fundamental question of human language interaction: what it is to mean, and how we communicate our meanings to others. Experienced textbook writer and eminent researcher Betty J. Birner gives balanced coverage to semantics and pragmatics, emphasizing interactions between the two, and discusses other fields of language study such as syntax, neurology, philosophy of language, and artificial intelligence in terms of their interfaces with linguistic meaning.

Comics and diagrams appear throughout to keep the reader engaged; and end-of-chapter quizzes, data-collection exercises, and opinion questions are employed along with more traditional exercises and discussion questions. In addition, the book features copious examples from real life and current events, along with boxes describing linguistic issues in the news and interesting and accessible research on topics like swearing, politics, and animal communication. Students will emerge ready for deeper study in semantics and pragmatics – and more importantly, with an understanding of how all of these fields serve the fundamental purpose of human language: the communication of meaning. Meaning is an ideal textbook for courses in linguistic meaning that focus on both semantics and pragmatics in equal parts, with special attention on philosophical questions, related subfields of linguistics, and interfaces among these various areas.

Appropriate for both undergraduate and graduate-level courses in semantics, pragmatics, and general linguistics, Meaning is essential reading for all students of linguistic meaning.

Betty J. Birner is a professor of Linguistics and Cognitive Science in the Department of English at Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL. She received her Ph.D. in 1992 from Northwestern University, and has written extensively on pragmatics, the semantics/pragmatics interface, and information structure.

List of boxes

List of figures

List of truth tables

Preface

Acknowledgments

1. What is language?

Linguistics

The rules of language

Language change

Research in linguistics

Philosophy of language: How meaning works

Types of meaning

Where is meaning located?

The philosophers weigh in, beginning with: Frege

Russell

Strawson

Donnellan

The upshot

Semantics and pragmatics

Discourse models and possible worlds

Exercises

2. Semantics I: Word meaning

What is a word?

Where words come from

Historical descent

Other sources of new words

Lexical relations

Approaches to word meaning

Componential analysis

Other primitive-based approaches

Prototype theory and The Great Sandwich Controversy

Exercises

3. Semantics II: Sentence meaning

Truth and meaning

Sentential relations

Logical operators

Negation

Conjunction

Disjunction

The conditional

The biconditional

Propositional logic

Analytic statements

Synthetic statements

Predicate logic

Predicates and constants

Variables

Quantifiers

Ambiguity and scope

Exercises

4. Pragmatics I: The Cooperative Principle

Reprise: Semantics vs. pragmatics

The Cooperative Principle

The maxims

The maxim of Quantity

The maxim of Quality

The maxim of Relation

The maxim of Manner

Revisiting Grice’s problem

Tests for conversational implicature

Implicature and pragmatic theory

Conventional implicature

The Gricean world view

Pragmatics after Grice

Explicature

Impliciture

Neo-Gricean theory

Relevance theory

Boundary disputes

Exercises

5. Pragmatics II: Speech acts

Speech acts

Performatives

Constatives

Types of speech acts: first pass

Indirect speech acts

Felicity conditions

Felicity conditions, speech acts, and the Cooperative Principle

Types of speech acts: second pass

Politeness theory

Exercises

6. Language structure

The Chomskyan revolution

Sound structure

Word structure

Morphemes

Allomorphs

Words

Parts of speech

Structure and function

Representing word structure

Other ways of building words

Sentence structure

Ambiguity and constituency

Representing sentence structure

Expanding our grammar

Structural ambiguity

So what’s the point?

Exercises

7. Interfaces I: Semantics, pragmatics, and philosophy

Reference and the semantics/pragmatics boundary

What do we refer to when we refer?

Deixis and anaphora

Indexicals

Deixis

Personal deixis

Spatial deixis

Temporal deixis

Discourse deixis

Anaphora

Reference resolution

Cataphora

Anaphora and phrase types

Definiteness

Definiteness as uniqueness

Definiteness as familiarity

Presupposition

Testing for presupposition

Presupposition triggers

Theories of presupposition

Accommodation

Exercises

8. Interfaces II: Structure and meaning

Semantic roles

Argument-structure alternations

Information structure

Preposing

Postposing

Argument reversal

Inference

Open propositions

Constructions

The type/token distinction

Exercises

9. Meaning and human cognition

Language and the brain

Brain structure

Neurons

Aphasia

Language and thought

Does the language I speak affect my view of reality?

Language use and world view

Advertising

Politics and public policy

Language and prejudice

Connecting the dots

Exercises

10. Meaning, minds, and machines

The nuts and bolts

Natural-language processing

Artificial intelligence

Data mining

Deep learning

Meaning and the self

Bodies and minds

Language and consciousness

Exercises

References

Index

Erscheinungsdatum
Zusatzinfo 15 Tables, black and white; 27 Line drawings, black and white; 11 Halftones, black and white; 38 Illustrations, black and white
Verlagsort London
Sprache englisch
Maße 174 x 246 mm
Gewicht 680 g
Themenwelt Geisteswissenschaften Geschichte
Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie
Geisteswissenschaften Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft Anglistik / Amerikanistik
Geisteswissenschaften Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft
Geisteswissenschaften Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft Sprachwissenschaft
ISBN-10 0-367-02880-8 / 0367028808
ISBN-13 978-0-367-02880-0 / 9780367028800
Zustand Neuware
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