>
From Grammar to Meaning: The Spontaneous Logicality of Language (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics (Hardcover))

From Grammar to Meaning: The Spontaneous Logicality of Language (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics (Hardcover))

  • £37.29
  • Save £52



Cambridge University Press, 9/12/2013
EAN 9781107033108, ISBN10: 1107033101

Hardcover, 378 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm
Language: English

In recent years, the study of formal semantics and formal pragmatics has grown tremendously, showing that core aspects of language meaning can be explained by a few principles. These principles are grounded in the logic that is behind - and tightly intertwined with - the grammar of human language. In this book, some of the most prominent figures in linguistics, including Noam Chomsky and Barbara H. Partee, offer new insights into the nature of linguistic meaning and pave the way for the further development of formal semantics and formal pragmatics. Each chapter investigates various dimensions in which the logical nature of human language manifests itself within a language and/or across languages. Phenomena like bare plurals, free choice items, scalar implicatures, intervention effects, and logical operators are investigated in depth and at times cross-linguistically and/or experimentally. This volume will be of interest to scholars working within the fields of semantics, pragmatics, language acquisition and psycholinguistics.

List of contributors
Acknowledgments
List of abbreviations
Introduction Ivano Caponigro and Carlo Cecchetto
Part I. From Grammar to Meaning
Foundational Issues
1. Portrait of a semanticist as a young man
Gennaro Chierchia 1979–1988 Barbara H. Partee
2. Notes on denotation and denoting Noam Chomsky
Part II. From Grammar to Meaning
Formal Developments, New Findings, and Challenges
3. On the existential force of bare plurals across languages Veneeta Dayal
4. Broaden your views, but try to stay focussed
a missing piece in the polarity system Anamaria Fălăuş
5. On the free choice potential of epistemic and deontic modals Maria Aloni and Michael Franke
6. Implicatures of modified numerals Clemens Mayr
7. A scalar semantics for scalar readings of number words Christopher Kennedy
8. Presuposition projection from quantificational sentences
trivalence, local accommodation, and presupposition strengthening Danny Fox
Part III. From Grammar to Meaning
Experimental Insights
9. Unification in child language Stephen Crain and Rosalind Thornton
10. Acquisition meets comparison
an investigation of gradable adjectives Francesca Panzeri, Francesca Foppolo and Maria Teresa Guasti
11. Intervention in grammar and processing Adriana Belletti and Luigi Rizzi
Appendix A. Gennaro Chierchia's list of publications
Appendix B. 'Logic and Linguistics
A Marriage of Inconvenience'
References
Index of names
Index of subjects.