Subject Guides: Linguistics: Semantics and Pragmatics

Semantics and Pragmatics

Semantics by András Kornai The focus of this textbook is the meaning of linguistic expressions, typically full sentences and longer texts. The author describes the conceptual and formal tools required for building semantic systems capable of understanding text, both for specific tasks such as information extraction and question answering and for broad undertakings such as the Semantic Web. The goal here is to present the fundamental ideas that working systems rest on, and this book is aimed primarily at Computer Science or Engineering students interested in developing semantic systems. The ideal reader is a hacker, a person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system.
ISBN: 9783319656458
Sociolinguistics: a sociological critique Urges the need for a critical analysis of all the philosophical assumptions on which sociolinguistics has been based, while emphasizing the sociological rather than the linguistic side of sociolinguistics.
ISBN: 9781138352902
Analyzing meaning : an introduction to semantics and pragmatics, Second corrected and slightly revised edition 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 and/or 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 and/or pragmatics.
Pragmatics, truth and underspecification : towards an atlas of meaning The concept of meaning, since Frege initiated the linguistic turn in 1884, has been the subject of numerous theories, hypotheses, methodologies and distinctions. One distinction of considerable strategic value relates to the location of meaning: some aspects of meaning can be found in language and are modelled with semantic values of various kinds; some aspects of meaning can be found in communicative processes and are modelled with pragmatic inferences of one sort or another. One hypothesis of great heuristic utility concerns the relationship that is assumed between the semantic and the pragmatic. This collection of especially commissioned papers examines current thinking on the plausible nature of the semantic, the possible character of the pragmatic and the mechanics of their intersection.

Semantics Archive For exchanging papers of interest to natural language semanticists and philosophers of language.