ANALYZING MEANING

ISBN: 9783961100675 Géneros: CFG Sinópsis: This book provides an introduction to the study of meaning in human language from a linguistic perspective It covers a fairly broad range of topics including lexical semantics compositional semantics and pragmatics The chapters are organized into six units 1 Foundational concepts 2 Word meanings 3 Implicature including indirect speech acts 4 Compositional semantics 5 Modals conditionals and causation 6 Tense aspect Most of the chapters include exercises which can be used for class discussion andor homework assignments and each chapter contains references for additional reading on the topics covered As the title indicates this book is truly an INTRODUCTION it provides a solid foundation which will prepare students to take more advanced and specialized courses in semantics andor pragmatics It is also intended as a reference for fieldworkers doing primary research on underdocumented languages to help them write grammatical descriptions that deal carefully and clearly with semantic issues The approach adopted here is largely descriptive and nonformal or in some places semiformal although some basic logical notation is introduced The book is written at level which should be appropriate for advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate students It presupposes some previous coursework in linguistics but does not presuppose any background in formal logic or set theory