This series offers a dynamic forum for original research into the nature of meaning in natural language, bridging contemporary semantics and pragmatics. It encourages scholarly work that engages with both historical and current lines of inquiry, making complex ideas accessible to a broad academic audience. The collection targets specialists in linguistics, philosophy, and cognitive science, as well as related fields. A key feature is the grounding of theoretical arguments in extensive examples, drawing primarily from English but also incorporating diverse languages.
This book explores linguistic and philosophical issues presented by sentences expressing personal taste, such as Roller coasters are fun, and examines how truth-theoretic semantics can account for expressions of this type. It provides a detailed and explicit formal grammar paired with semantic analysis and pragmatic theory.
This book explores the semantics and pragmatics of honorifics, expressions that indicate the degree of formality that a speaker feels is required in interacting with another person. The analysis is applied to a variety of empirical examples, particularly from Japanese and Thai, and explores a wide range of related philosophical issues.
Focusing on the interplay between syntax and human reasoning, Gennaro Chierchia explores polarity sensitive and free choice items to deepen our understanding of language. He offers a new perspective on the semantics of focus and scope, as well as the pragmatics of implicature, positioning these elements within a recursive semantic framework. This investigation sheds light on the complexities of language processing and the cognitive mechanisms behind it.
This book considers how observations about the past influence future behaviour, as expressed in language. Focusing on information gathered from speech and other evidence sources, the author offers a model of how judgements about reliability can be made, and how such judgements factor into how people treat information they acquire via those sources