All humans can interpret sentences of their native language quickly and without effort. Working from the perspective of generative grammar, this volume investigates three mental mechanisms that are widely assumed to underlie this ability: compositional semantics, implicature computation and presupposition computation. For all three mechanisms, formal models have been advanced recently that are accurate for many cases. There is some consensus in the field, however, that further progress requires stronger interconnections between these results. This collection brings together experts from semantics and pragmatics who push this agenda forward. From this perspective, the contributors develop new insights into important empirical phenomena; for example, individual level predicates, free choice effects, presupposition accommodation, exhaustivity effects, specificity. With contributions by many leading researchers in the field, this book will be a useful source for both researchers and students interested in sentence interpretation and language use.
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: U.Sauerland & P.Stateva
Quantifier Dependent Readings of Anaphoric Presuppositions; S.Beck
Licensing or; R.Eckardt
Free Choice and the Theory of Scalar Implicatures; D.Fox
Partial Variables and Specificity; G.Jäger
Negated Antonyms: Creating and Filling the Gap; M.Krifka
Pragmatic Constraints on Adverbial/Temporal Quantification; O.Percus
Transparency: An Incremental Theory of Presupposition Projection; P.Schlenker
Aspects of the Pragmatics of Plural Morphology: on Higher-Order Implicatures; B.Spector
Index
ULI SAUERLAND is Research Team Leader at the Centre for General Linguistics (ZAS) Berlin, Germany. Dr. Sauerland is the author of more than 40 reviewed publications on syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and their interaction.
PENKA STATEVA is a Research Associate at the Centre for General Linguistics (ZAS), Berlin, Germany. Dr. Stateva's research reflects her interests in the semantics of natural language comparison, plurals, possessives, and the relation between the syntactic and semantic grammar components.
Description
All humans can interpret sentences of their native language quickly and without effort. Working from the perspective of generative grammar, this volume investigates three mental mechanisms that are widely assumed to underlie this ability: compositional semantics, implicature computation and presupposition computation. For all three mechanisms, formal models have been advanced recently that are accurate for many cases. There is some consensus in the field, however, that further progress requires stronger interconnections between these results. This collection brings together experts from semantics and pragmatics who push this agenda forward. From this perspective, the contributors develop new insights into important empirical phenomena; for example, individual level predicates, free choice effects, presupposition accommodation, exhaustivity effects, specificity. With contributions by many leading researchers in the field, this book will be a useful source for both researchers and students interested in sentence interpretation and language use.
Contents
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: U.Sauerland & P.Stateva
Quantifier Dependent Readings of Anaphoric Presuppositions; S.Beck
Licensing or; R.Eckardt
Free Choice and the Theory of Scalar Implicatures; D.Fox
Partial Variables and Specificity; G.Jäger
Negated Antonyms: Creating and Filling the Gap; M.Krifka
Pragmatic Constraints on Adverbial/Temporal Quantification; O.Percus
Transparency: An Incremental Theory of Presupposition Projection; P.Schlenker
Aspects of the Pragmatics of Plural Morphology: on Higher-Order Implicatures; B.Spector
Index
Authors
ULI SAUERLAND is Research Team Leader at the Centre for General Linguistics (ZAS) Berlin, Germany. Dr. Sauerland is the author of more than 40 reviewed publications on syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and their interaction.
PENKA STATEVA is a Research Associate at the Centre for General Linguistics (ZAS), Berlin, Germany. Dr. Stateva's research reflects her interests in the semantics of natural language comparison, plurals, possessives, and the relation between the syntactic and semantic grammar components.
|