Semantics & Pragmatics

Pragmatics: A Slim Guide

Betty J. Birner

9780198828594
Paperback
January 2021

This book offers a concise but comprehensive entry-level guide to the study of meaning in context. Betty Birner explores how we understand the difference between the literal meaning of what is said and what was intended by the speaker, using a wide range of real-life examples.

Enriched Meanings: Natural Language Semantics with Category Theory

Ash Asudeh, Gianluca Giorgolo

9780198847861
Paperback
September 2020

Oxford Studies in Semantics and Pragmatics

This book develops a theory of enriched meanings for natural language interpretation that uses the concept of monads and related ideas from category theory. The volume is interdisciplinary in nature, and will appeal to graduate students and researchers from a range of disciplines interested in natural language understanding and representation.

Gender and Noun Classification

Éric Mathieu, Myriam Dali, Gita Zareikar

9780198828112
Paperback
November 2018

Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics

This volume explores the many ways by which natural languages categorize nouns into genders or classes. The findings in the volume have significant implications for syntactic theory and theories of interpretation, and contribute to a greater understanding of the interplay between inflection and derivation.

The Lexical Semantics of the Arabic Verb

Peter John Glanville

9780198792741
Paperback
May 2018

This book explores Arabic derivational morphology, focusing on the relationship between verb meaning and linguistic forms from a lexical semantic perspective. It explains why verbs with seemingly unrelated meanings share the same phonological shape, and analyses sets of words containing the same consonantal root to arrive at a common abstraction.

Speech Acts and Clause Types: English in a Cross-Linguistic Context

Peter Siemund

9780198718147
Paperback
March 2018

Oxford Textbooks in Linguistics

This book is an introduction to the relationship between the morphosyntactic properties of sentences and their associated illocutionary forces or force potentials. It draws on insights from linguistics, philosophy, and sociology, and may be used as a textbook for undergraduate or graduate courses in semantics, pragmatics, and morphosyntax.

Mood

Paul Portner

9780199547531
Paperback
January 2018

Oxford Surveys in Semantics and Pragmatics

This book presents the essential background for understanding semantic theories of both verbal mood and sentence mood. Paul Portner evaluates and compares the theories, draws connections between seemingly disparate approaches, and highlights the most significant insights in the literature to provide a clearer understanding of how mood works.

Subjectivity and Perspective in Truth-Theoretic Semantics

Peter Lasersohn

9780199573684
Paperback
December 2016

Oxford Studies in Semantics and Pragmatics

This book explores linguistic and philosophical issues presented by sentences expressing personal taste, such as Roller coasters are fun, and examines how truth-theoretic semantics can account for expressions of this type. It provides a detailed and explicit formal grammar paired with semantic analysis and pragmatic theory.

Questions

Veneeta Dayal

9780199281275
Paperback
November 2016

Oxford Surveys in Semantics and Pragmatics

This book synthesizes and integrates 40 years of research on the semantics of questions, and its interface with pragmatics and syntax. It will be a unique resource for the novice and expert alike, and seeks to appeal to a variety of readers without compromising depth and breadth of coverage.

Intonation and Meaning

Daniel Büring

9780199226276
Paperback
July 2016

Oxford Surveys in Semantics and Pragmatics

This book examines the interplay between prosody-stress, phrasing, and melody-and interpretation-felicity in discourse, inferences, and emphasis. It presents the main phenomena involved, and introduces current formal analyses of prosodic structure, relevant aspects of discourse structure, intonational meaning, and the relations between them.

A User's Guide to Thought and Meaning

Ray Jackendoff

9780198736455
Paperback
April 2015

A profoundly arresting integration of the faculties of the mind - of how we think, speak, and see the world. Written with an informality that belies the originality of its insights and the radical nature of its conclusions, this is the author's most important book since his groundbreaking Foundations of Language in 2002.

Pragmatics

Second Edition

Yan Huang

9780199577767
Paperback
November 2014

Oxford Textbooks in Linguistics

Yan Huang's highly successful textbook on pragmatics has been fully revised and updated. It includes a brand new chapter on reference, a major topic in both linguistics and the philosophy of language, as well as new material covering subjects including conversational implicature, emotional deixis, and contextualism versus semantic minimalism.

Compositional Semantics: An Introduction to the Syntax/Semantics Interface

Pauline Jacobson

9780199677153
Paperback
August 2014

Oxford Textbooks in Linguistics

This book provides an introduction to compositional semantics and to the syntax/semantics interface, combining Direct Compositionality with approaches based on Logical Form. It is intended for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in linguistics, philosophy of language, and other related fields.

Making New Words: Morphological Derivation in English

R. M. W Dixon

9780198712374
Paperback
August 2014

This book provides a detailed study of around 200 English prefixes and suffixes. Each affix is discussed in detail, with information on its origin, phonological form, stress placement, semantic range, and the roots it can be attached to. It will be a valuable text for those studying English language and linguistics from undergraduate level upwards

Meaning: A Slim Guide to Semantics

Paul Elbourne

9780199696628
Paperback
October 2011

Paul Elbourne explores the complex nature of meaning in crystal clear language. He draws on approaches developed in linguistics, philosophy, and psychology - assuming a knowledge of none of them - in a manner that will appeal to everyone interested in this essential element of human psychology and culture.

Meaning in Language: An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Third Edition

Alan Cruse

9780199559466
Paperback
November 2010

Oxford Textbooks in Linguistics

A comprehensive introduction to the ways in which meaning is conveyed in language. Alan Cruse covers semantic matters, but also deals with topics that are usually considered to fall under pragmatics. A major aim is to highlight the richness and subtlety of meaning phenomena, rather than to expound any particular theory.