Semantics and Pragmatics

This book considers the syntax of the left periphery of clauses in relation to the extra‐sentential context. The prevailing point of view, in the literature in this field is that the external context does not intervene at all in the syntax of the sentence, and that the interaction between sentence and context takes place post‐syntactically. This monograph challenges this view and proposes that reference to indexicality is syntactically encoded in the left‐most position of the clause, where the speaker's temporal and spatial location is represented. To support this hypothesis, it analyses various kinds of temporal dependencies in embedded clauses, such as indicative versus subjunctive, and proposes a new analysis of the imperfect and the future‐in‐the‐past. The book also compares languages such as Italian and English with languages which have different properties of temporal interpretation, such as Chinese. Finally, analysis of the literary style known as Free Indirect Discourse also supports the hypothesis, showing that it may have a wide range of consequences.

This book develops a new analysis of the interpretation of verb phrases and VP adjunction by arguing that the lexical subcategorization information of verbs is systematically underspecified and is only resolved when verb phrases are built in context, with recourse to pragmatic knowledge. This idea is formally implemented in the framework Dynamic Syntax by introducing an underspecified semantic type into the logical system. This provides an account of how verb phrases are built on-line and how verbs can be used with a different array of complements on each occasion of use. Under this dynamic view, the interpretation of verbs is argued to be essentially pragmatic, making use of the notion of ad hoc concept formation developed in Relevance theory. The approach is illustrated in detail by a case study of Swahili applied verbs. The study brings together results from dynamic approaches to syntax and Relevance theoretic pragmatics, and charts the stretch of the syntax-pragmatic interface where lexical information from verbs and contextual concept formation meet.

This book draws together nine original investigations by leading linguists and promising young scholars on the syntax of complementisers (eg that in She said that she would) and their phrases. The chapters are divided into two parts, each of which highlights aspects of the behaviour and function of complementisers. The first part looks at how and when subjects, or parts of subjects, can and cannot move outside their canonical position in a sentence. Each chapter examines and compares the relevance of a number of syntactic factors in languages such as English, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Brazilian Portuguese, and Bavarian. In the second part, the focus turns to the nature and function of complementisers themselves, with discussions drawing on evidence from Italian, Italian dialects, Hebrew, and Dutch.

The Construal of Spatial Meaning: Windows into Conceptual Space explores the construal and expression of various aspects of the SPACE domain. Within the broad framework of Cognitive Linguistics, the research reported probes the interaction between language and cognition. We take linguistics to encompass both verbal and non-verbal communication systems and include metaphorical as well as literal forms of expression. Although the papers focus on the relation between physical and mental space as expressed in human communication, they cover a wide variety of research topics and reflect the multidisciplinary character of the study of space. Through the structure of this book the editors wish to convey to the reader the metaphor that the different approaches in the analysis of SPACE offer windows through which researchers are able to catch glimpses of ‘inner space’. An eye-tracking experiment shows eye movement to reflect spatiality during visualizations of both pictures and spoken scene descriptions. A study of a child shows how the development of linguistic communicative ability may be seen as a transition from pointing in physical space to pointing in mental spaces. A study of drawings based on verbal stimuli suggests that people are engaging in an imaginative embodied simulation of metaphorical motion. In one gesture study on route direction with blocked visibility, participants tend to use the dominant hand for referential aspects and the weak hand for self-orientational functions. In another, through gestures and body postures, a girl with the Patau syndrome extracts and conveys intricate information in communication situations. In yet another gesture study, speakers express lateral (left/right) direction in co-speech gestures when using next to to complement the linguistic spatial unit with unlexicalized locative information. An analysis of the motion situation distinguishes between primary and secondary figure and ground, and subdivides Talmy’s notion of Manner into manner of static existence and dynamic activity and makes Talmy’s telic Path dependent on autonomous resultant state situations. One cross-linguistic study offers experimental support for basic-level verbs of locomotion without making recourse to the loose notion of Manner, while another, in which German and French children describe motion events, supports the view that general cognitive factors and language-specific properties determine children’s construction of the semantics of space when encoding Manner and Path. In a usage-based study of children’s acquisition of Dutch spatial adjectives it is suggested that children, who often use spatial adjectives to express contrast, store specific adjective–noun/object pairings from the input and start by reproducing them with the same communicative function as in the language they hear around them. A corpus-study of Danish directional adverbs shows how the forms can be described and explained as different ways of profiling a dynamic motion event in a basic Path event frame. A construction-grammar analysis of some complex predicate constructions reveals systematic differences between English and Spanish in the organization of the argument structure, and argues that fundamental typological distinctions should be based on the relative importance of constructional and lexical constraints. In a corpus-based study of road, path, way it is shown that both non-metaphorical and metaphorical instances of these terms are closely connected with people’s embodied experiences of travel through space along paths, roads, or ways. The last paper, investigating negation, opens up a window to the ‘inner space’ by suggesting that antonyms are organized into conceptual spaces. ‘Not’ is a degree modifier operating on the configurational construals in space. In combination with bounded antonyms it operates on the boundary and bisects a spatial structure, while with unbounded antonyms it modifies the unbounded scale structure and evokes a range on the scale in space, like ‘fairly’.

Copulas (in English, the verb to be) are conventionally defined functionally as a means of relating elements of clause structure, especially subject and complement, and considered to be semantically empty or meaningless. They have received relatively little attention from linguists. This book goes some way towards correcting this neglect. In doing so it takes issue with both accepted definition and description. The book presents an analysis of grammatical descriptions of more than 160 languages drawn from the language families of the world. The book shows that some languages have a single copula, others several, and some none at all. In a series of statistical analyses it seeks to explain why by linking the distribution of copulas to variations in lexical categorization and syntactic structure. The book concludes by advancing a comprehensive theory of copularization which it relates to language classification and to theories of language change, notably grammaticalization.

This volume explores the expression of the concepts count and mass in human language and probes the complex relation between seemingly incontrovertible aspects of meaning and their varied grammatical realizations across languages. In English, count nouns are those that can be counted and pluralized (two cats), whereas mass nouns cannot be, at least not without a change in meaning (two rices). The chapters in this volume explore the question of the cognitive and linguistic universality and variability of the concepts count and mass from philosophical, semantic, and morpho-syntactic points of view, touching also on issues in acquisition and processing. The volume also significantly contributes to our cross-linguistic knowledge, as it includes chapters with a focus on Blackfoot, Cantonese, Dagaare, English, Halkomelem, Lithuanian, Malagasy, Mandarin, Ojibwe, and Persian, as well as discussion of several other languages including Armenian, Hungarian, and Korean. The overall consensus of this volume is that while the general concepts of count and mass are available to all humans, forms of grammaticalization involving number, classifiers, and determiners play a key role in their linguistic treatment, and indeed in whether these concepts are grammatically expressed at all. This variation may be reflect the fact that count/mass is just one possible realization of a deeper and broader concept, itself related to the categories of nominal and verbal aspect.

The book offers an original theory of meaning in discourse that combines a dynamic representation of discourse with an intentional explanation of processing. It contains an exposition of a theory of default semantics and its application to a range of language constructions. Default semantics provides cognitive foundations of discourse interpretation and does so in a broadly conceived truth-conditional framework where truth conditions are applied to utterances. The theory combines the subject matter of post-Gricean ‘truth-conditional pragmatics’ with the formalism and semanticization of meaning found in discourse representation theory (DRT). It is assumed that pragmatic information can contribute to the truth-conditional representation of an utterance. This information can have the form of (i) conscious inference, or it can have a form of default interpretation conceived of as (ii) cognitive defaults and (iii) social-cultural defaults. From DRT, it borrows the idea of dynamic semantics as context change implemented in semantic representation and the idea that meaning in discourse will, somehow or other, turn out to be compositional, that is, it will turn out to be a function of the parts and the structure. In short, default semantics combines two seemingly incompatible assumptions that (i) pragmatic input contributes to the truth conditions and (ii) the theory of meaning of utterances and discourses is a compositional, semantic theory. Such semantic representations are called merger representations in that they combine (merge) information from word meaning, sentence structure, pragmatic inference, and various kinds of defaults. Predicating compositionality of such merger representations aided by using an extended and amended language of DRT allows for the semanticization of the account of discourse meaning. The book is divided into two parts. Part I contains theoretical foundations and addresses the questions of the semantics/pragmatics boundary, underspecification, logical form, levels of representation, default meanings, and ‘pragmatic’ compositionality of merger representations. Part II contains some applications of the theory, including definite descriptions, propositional attitude reports, temporality, presupposition, sentential connectives, and number terms.

This book introduces the rapidly evolving field of electronic lexicography. The aim is to provide a wide overview of the full process of electronic dictionary production and present some of the challenges faced by publishers, editors and lexicographers as well as the benefits offered to a wide range of users language learners, translators and professionals. Throughout the book particular focus is placed on user needs and the functionalities of electronic dictionaries that are designed to meet them. The volume contains chapters introducing some innovative dictionary projects and surveys of dictionary use. One of the hallmarks of the volume is that it is not limited to English but touches on a range of other languages (Bantu languages, French, German, Russian, Slovene, Spanish as well as sign language). Another key feature of the volume is that it embraces a wide range of lexicographic theories and practices.

Perception verbs – such as look, see, taste, hear, feel, sound, listen, and observe – present unresolved problems for linguistic theories. This book examines the predictability of relations between their semantics and syntactic behaviour, the different kinds of polysemy they exhibit, and the role of evidentiality in verbs like seem and appear. After an opening chapter explaining the nature of the issues, there is a concise introduction to Word Grammar. Chapter 3 considers the implications of the approach for a general theory of event structure, and looks at how Word Grammar can be applied to causation, argument linking, and the modelling of polysemy. Chapter 4 explores the polysemy of see; chapter 5 looks at relations between verbs of active perception like listen, and verbs of involuntary perception such as hear; chapter 6 explores the semantics of non‐finite predicative complementation; and chapter 7 discusses verbs of appearance. Chapter 8 presents some conclusions.

This book articulates and defends a simple conception of semantic composition: when two meaningful expressions are concatenated, the result is understood as a conjunction of monadic predicates; in human languages, concatenation always signifies predicate conjunction. From this ‘Conjunctivist’ perspective, simple cases of adjunction (like ‘black cat’) are paradigms, and neo-Davidsonian event analyzes rightly associate certain grammatical relations with thematic roles. The sentence ‘Fido chased Garfield yesterday’ means, roughly, that something satisfies four conditions: its Agent was Fido, it was a chase, its Theme was Garfield, and it occurred yesterday. Such analyses, involving existential closure of a covert variable, are easily extended to examples involving negation and sentential connectives. This book contains four chapters. Chapter 1 compares elementary Conjunctivist proposals with ‘Functionist’ accounts according to which (i) predicate-argument concatenation signifies function-application, and (ii) adjuncts are accommodated by appeal to type-shifting or function-conjunction. Chapter 2 provides a Conjunctivist account of quantificational constructions, like ‘chased every cat’, in terms of a metalanguage with plural variables. This account is extended to plural noun phrases, as in ‘Three dogs chased the cats’; and this suggests a treatment of apparently nonconjunctive phrases like ‘big ants’. The resulting proposals — which explain the conservativity of determiners, and handle collective readings without quantifying over collections — are better than Functionist alternatives. Chapter 3 shows that Conjunctivism is superior to Functionism with regards to causative constructions, serial verbs, and many verbs that combine with complementizer phrases. Chapter 4 is a summary of conclusions, and discusses some difficulties facing all extant accounts of meaning.