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How do words stand for things? Taking ideas from philosophical semantics and pragmatics, this book offers a unique, detailed, and critical survey of central debates concerning linguistic reference in the twentieth century. It then uses the survey to identify and argue for a novel version of current 'two-dimensional' theories of meaning, which generalise the context-dependency of indexical expressions. The survey highlights the history of tensions between semantic and epistemic constraints on plausible theories of word meaning, from analytic philosophy and modern truth-conditional semantics, to the Referentialist and Externalist revolutions in theories of meaning, to the more recent reconciliatory ambition of two-dimensionalists. It clearly introduces technical semantical notions, theses, and arguments, with easy-to-follow, step-by-step guides. Wide-ranging in its scope, yet offering an accessible route into literature that can seem complex and technical, this will be essential reading for advanced students, and academic researchers in semantics, pragmatics, and philosophy of language.

To achieve successful communication, it is crucial to say clearly what we mean, but, at the same time, we need to pay attention to the form of our utterances, to avoid misunderstandings and the risk of offending our interlocutors. To avoid these pitfalls, we use a special category of utterances called 'indirect speech acts' (ISAs) that enable an optimal balance between clarity and politeness. But how do interpreters identify the meaning of these ISAs? And how does the social context influence the use of ISAs? This book attempts to answer these questions. It deals with the main theoretical and empirical questions surrounding the meaning and usage of ISAs, drawing on the latest research and neuroimaging data. Adopting a truly interdisciplinary perspective, it will appeal to students and scholars from diverse backgrounds, and anyone interested in exploring this phenomenon, which is so pervasive in our daily lives.

Propositional attitude reports are sentences built around clause-embedding psychological verbs, like Kim believes that it's raining or Kim wants it to rain. These interact in many intricate ways with a wide variety of semantically relevant grammatical phenomena, and represent one of the most important topics at the interface of linguistics and philosophy, as their study provides insight into foundational questions about meaning. This book provides a bird's-eye overview of the grammar of propositional attitude reports, synthesizing the key facts, theories, and open problems in their analysis. Couched in the theoretical framework of generative grammar and compositional truth-conditional semantics, it places emphasis on points of intersection between propositional attitude reports and other important topics in semantic and syntactic theory. With discussion points, suggestions for further reading and a useful guide to symbols and conventions, it will be welcomed by students and researchers wishing to explore this fertile area of study.

An accessible and thorough introduction to implicatures, a key topic in pragmatics. It will appeal to students and teachers in linguistics, applied linguistics, psychology and sociology, who are interested in how language is used for communication, and how children and second language learners develop pragmatic skills.

Ideal for advanced students and individual researchers in semantics and pragmatics, as well as related fields such as philosophy. It provides a non-specialized audience with the understanding of what irony is and its numerous manifestations. To specialized readers, its analysis of irony offers a deeper understanding and clarification of this form of human communication.

The book is an investigation of the semantics of numericals, counting and measuring, and its connection to the mass/count distinction from a theoretical and crosslinguistic perspective. It reviews some recent major linguistic results in these topics, and presents the author's new research including in-depth case studies of a number of typologically unrelated languages.

Modification offers a thorough and accessible exploration of what adjectives and adverbs mean, how they interact with what they modify, and how language expresses the inherent gradience of the world. An invaluable addition to the field for students and researchers in linguistics, the philosophy of language and psycholinguistics.

This book explores one of the most central and puzzling features of language: imperative sentences. It is the first systematic survey to employ data from a range of languages, including many outside the Indo-European family and it provides a comprehensive and in-depth critical discussion of existing semantic and pragmatic theories.

Using over a hundred jokes as linguistic examples, this book introduces and critiques a wide range of semantic and pragmatic theories in relation to humour. It is an entertaining and user-friendly textbook for advanced students of semantics, pragmatics and humour studies.

A summary, critique and comparison of the most important theories on how metaphors are used and understood, drawing on research from linguistics, psychology and other disciplines. Written in a non-technical style, the book includes clear definitions, examples, discussion questions and a glossary, making it ideal for graduate-level seminars.