For the first time in English, this anthology offers a comprehensive selection of primary sources in the history of philosophy of language. Beginning with a detailed introduction contextualizing the subject, the editors draw out recurring themes, including the origin of language, the role of nature and convention in fixing form and meaning, language acquisition, ideal languages, varieties of meanings, language as a tool, and the nexus of language and thought, linking them to representative texts.
Contributions in this book illustrate the many methods available for researching language in context and for the analysis of everyday text types. Each chapter highlights language as a resource for the expression of meanings—a social semiotic resource. Text analysis is used to reveal our capacity to formulate multiple meanings for participation in different social practices—in relationships, in work, in education and in leisure. The approach is applied in text-based teaching and in the critical analysis of public discourses.
In this book, Peter Culicover introduces the analysis of natural language within the broader question of how language works - of how people use languages to configure words and morphemes in order to express meanings. He focuses both on the syntactic and morphosyntactic devices that languages use, and on the conceptual structures that correspond to particular aspects of linguistic form. He seeks to explain linguistic forms and in the process to show how these correspond with meanings.
Browning is a forerunner of modernism. His poetry can offer difficulty because of the labyrinthian syntax in pursuit of meanings which for their originator, at least, were clear.
