Meaning in Interaction: An Introduction to Pragmatics
This volume is a comprehensive introductory text which discusses the development of pragmatics - its aims and methodology - and also introduces themes that are not generally covered in other texts. It is an ideal introductory textbook for students of linguistics and for all who are interested in analysing problems in communication. Jenny Thomas focuses on the dynamic nature of speaker meaning, considering the central roles of both speaker and hearer, and takes into account the social and psychological factors involved in the generation and interpretation of utterances.
Punctuation is important. Period. Good writers know the rules, but skilled punctuators don't simply go by the conventions. They use punctuation to make meaning. Practical Punctuation shows you how to help students discover the relationship between punctuation and meaning - and how they can use it to improve their writing.
Toward the end of the 20th century, there is both a dissatisfaction with existing formal semantic theories and a wish to preserve insights from other semantic traditions. Cognitive semantics, the latest of the major trends which have dominated the century, attempts to do this by focusing on meaning as a cognitive phenomenon. This book provides different perspectives on meaning as a cognitive phenomenon.
Lexical Meaning in Dialogic Language Use" addresses a number of central issues in the field of lexical semantics. Starting off from an action-theoretical view of communication meaning is defined as something that speakers do in dialogic language use. Meaning as meaning-in-use opens up a new perspective on a number of aspects: how can we define the lexical unit? What about the make-up of the meaning side? Does polysemy really exist? And is encyclopaedic information to be fully integrated into the lexiconT
This volume is a comprehensive, up-to-date, and readable introduction to linguistic meaning. While partial to conceptual and typological approaches, the book also presents results from formal approaches. Throughout, the focus is on grammatical meaning -- the way languages delineate universal semantic space and encode it in grammatical form.
