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Pragmatics & Beyond
From 1980–1986 texts in Pragmatics & Beyond were published at irregular intervals. The series then evolved into <a href="0922842x">Pragmatics & Beyond New Series</a>.
1 - 20 of 55 results
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Ambiguity in Psycholinguistics
Author(s): Joseph F. Kess and Ronald A. HoppePublication Date January 1981More LessThe authors present a comprehensive overview of past research in ambiguity in the field of psycholinguistics. Experimental results have often been equivocal in allowing a choice between the single-reading hypothesis and the multiple-reading hypothesis of processing of ambiguous sentences. This text reviews the arguments and experimental results in support of each of these views, and further investigates the contributions of context and thematic constraints in the process of ambiguity resolution. Commentary is also made on the possible hierarchical ordering of difficulty in the treatment of ambiguity, as well as critically related considerations like bias, individual differences, general cognitive strategies for dealing with multiphase representations, and the inherent differences between lexical and syntactic ambiguity.
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Bilingual Conversation
Author(s): Peter AuerPublication Date January 1984More LessCode-switching and related phenomena have met with linguists’ increasing interest over the last decade. However, much of the research has been restricted to the structural (grammatical) properties of the use of two languages in conversation; scholars who have tried to capture the interactive meaning of switching have often failed to go beyond more or less anecdotal descriptions of individual, particularly striking, cases. The book bridges this gap by providing a coherent, comprehensive and generative model for language alternation, drawing on recent trends and methods in conversational analysis. The empirical basis is the speech of Italian migrant children in Constance, Germany.
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Biological Foundations of Linguistic Communication
Author(s): Thomas T. BallmerPublication Date January 1982More LessThis is the second of two volumes – the first volume being Waltraud Brennenstuhl’s Control and Ability (P&B III:4) – treating biocybernetical questions of language. This book starts out from an investigation of the (neuro-)biological relevancy of natural language from the point of view of grammar and the lexicon. Furthermore, the basic mechanisms of the self-organization of organisms in their environments are discussed, in so far as they lead to linguistic control and abilities.
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Catastrophe Theoretic Semantics
Author(s): Wolfgang WildgenPublication Date January 1982More LessRené Thom, the famous French mathematician and founder of catastrophe theory, considered linguistics an exemplary field for the application of his general morphology. It is surprising that physicists, chemists, biologists, psychologists and sociologists are all engaged in the field of catastrophe theory, but that there has been almost no echo from linguistics. Meanwhile linguistics has evolved in the direction of René Thom’s intuitions about an integrated science of language and it has become a necessary task to review, update and elaborate the proposals made by Thom and to embed them in the framework of modern semantic theory.
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Contexts of Understanding
Author(s): Herman ParretPublication Date January 1980More LessThis essay deals with the difficulty of understanding understanding, taking the understanding of natural language fragments as a paradigm.
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Control and Ability
Author(s): Waltraud BrennenstuhlPublication Date January 1982More LessThis is the first of the two volumes – the second volume being Thomas Ballmer’s Biological Foundations of Linguistic Communication (P&B III:7) – treating biocybernetical questions of language. This book starts from a cybernetic explication of some action theoretic notions, like control and ability. These notions are used in order to provide adequate means of describing the complex and subtle phenomena of communication, both from a general point of view as well as from a specifically linguistic perspective. In addition the relation between biological systems and language is discussed.
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A Discourse Production Model for 'Twenty Questions'
Author(s): Michael FortescuePublication Date January 1980More LessThis essay is an attempt to build up a plausible model of the cognitive processes behind the behavior exhibited by speaker-hearers in a specific discourse situation.
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Essai sur les modalités tensives
Author(s): Claude ZilberbergPublication Date January 1981More LessThe four studies grouped under the title Essai sur les modalités tensives touch upon several questions of semiotics presently debated in the theoretical framework proposed by A.J. Greimas. They are mainly concerned with the passages between meaning and form, and with the convertibilités between the different levels.
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Explorations in Japanese Sociolinguistics
Author(s): Leo LovedayPublication Date January 1986More LessExplorations in Japanese Sociolinguistics provides a treasure of information on the Japanese language and the social and cultural system it has developed and is embedded in. To the non-specialist, it opens an unknown world. To the specialist it offers theoretical and methodological perspectives aimed at avoiding the interference of myth and musing with accurate characterizations. A general introduction on Japanese sociolinguistics is followed by two case studies, one on the ethnography of ritual and address at a Japanese wedding reception, and one on the pragmatics of Japanese donatory verbs. The final chapter discusses cross-cultural contrasts and the danger of semiotic schism in Japanese-Western interaction.
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Explorations in Semantics and Pragmatics
Author(s): Geoffrey N. LeechPublication Date January 1980More LessThe aim of this book is to show the way forward to a coherent view of language in which the achievement of the formalist paradigm is strengthened to the extent that its claims are weakened. A formal theory such as generative grammar is a special theory which is to be subsumed in a general theory of linguistic communication that also includes pragmatics. The tension between the psycho-formalist and the socio-functional views could be resolved in a synthesis whereby both the psychological and social natures of language are fully acknowledged. Semantics and pragmatics, representing these two natures in the study of meaning, have distinct goals, which can be defined more clearly and pursued more effectively to the extent that both their distinctness and their interdependence are recognized.
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From Logic to Rhetoric
Author(s): Michel MeyerPublication Date January 1986More LessWhat is language, and how has it been conceived since Frege? How did the development of thought about language lead to a renewed interest in rhetoric in the twentieth century and ultimately to the ‘problematological synthesis’? These are the main questions treated in this book. A constant intertwining of historical and topical viewpoints characterizes the author’s approach.
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Here and There
Editor(s): Jürgen Weissenborn and Wolfgang KleinPublication Date January 1982More LessDeixis – the rooting of utterances in the speech situation – is one of the most salient universals of natural language. The ways in which different languages link utterances to pragmatic factors such as speech time, speech place, and speech participants show a rich variation. This makes deixis a particular fruitful domain for the study of universals, language comparison, and the relationship between language and reality. This volume presents and discusses deictic systems of both Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages, including Russian, Czech, Spanish, German (standard and dialect), Hungarian, Chinese, Japanese, Hausa, Swahili, Hopi, Eipo, Tolai, Diyari. Focus is on spatial deixis, but other deictic and demonstrative expressions are treated as well.
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The Inheritance of Presupposition
Author(s): John DinsmorePublication Date January 1981More LessThis work presents a procedural account of the so-called ‘projection problem’ for presupposition. It is assumed that presuppositions embedded in complex sentences are subject to no projection rules or ad-hoc conditions whatever, but are in fact satisfied in appropriate contexts in a completely uniform way. It is demonstrated that the apparent filtering, alteration, or preservation of an embedded presupposition is in every case a logical consequence of a general, independently motivated model of language processing and knowledge representation. It is shown in detail that turning the ‘projection problem’ upside-down in this way leads to a far more explanatory and descriptively adequate account than any previously proposed.
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International News Reporting
Author(s): Jef VerschuerenPublication Date January 1985More LessWith reference to a brief description of inherent properties of the international news reporting process in a free press tradition, Verschueren criticizes their being neglected in linguistic approaches to the language of the media. In an attempt to illustrate the potential contribution of functional linguistic analyses to a better understanding of the printed media as a channel for international communication, he investigates the use of metapragmatic metaphors (in particular metaphorical verbs of speaking) in the reporting by The New York Times on the U-2 incident in May 1960. The framing of the incident as a communicative event is evaluated along the dimensions of factual truth, interpretational accuracy, and understanding.
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It is Hereby Performed...
Author(s): Dennis KurzonPublication Date January 1986More LessThis book deals with speech acts, especially performatives, that are regarded as ‘operative’ in legal discourse. After a detailed exposition of speech act theory in relation to legislative texts, the author discusses the legal document as a communicative act; potential speech acts and delegated legislation; wills, the marriage ceremony and statutes as reversible performatives; and the distinction between the deictic function of this and the anaphoric function of that in legal documents. The final chapter is concerned with another text type, case reports, and addresses the question whether the judge makes or merely declares the law. This is discussed from the point of view of certain syntactic structures, in particular modal verbs.
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Jordanian Arabic between Diglossia and Bilingualism
Author(s): Salah M. SuleimanPublication Date January 1985More LessSuleiman provides a linguistic analysis of Jordanian Arabic spoken by educated groups and in particular by students at Yarmouk University. He investigates the extent to which spoken Jordanian Arabic is affected by the classical-colloquial dichotomy (i.e. the extent to which diglossia is involved). In addition, the influence of language contact between English and Arabic is studied (with reference to code-switching, interference and integration) by comparing the linguistic repertoire of Yarmouk students (where English is often used as a medium of instruction) with that of students at other Arab universities (where the medium of instruction is basically Arabic).
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Language and Action
Author(s): Danilo Marcondes de Souza FilhoPublication Date January 1985More LessThis work consists of an examination and revision of some of the main theses of Speech Act Theory in relation to the problem of ideology and action-guiding language. Starting from the idea that linguistic philosophy must take into account how the social structure of the linguistic community may influence and direct the way its language is used, a critical method of analysis is proposed, developing Speech Act Theory in a way suitable for this purpose. The main guideline of this proposal is the consideration that a theory of action rather than a theory of meaning should be taken as central in the analysis of language. The notion of illocutionary force, the problem of intentions and conventions in the constitution of speech acts, the definition of context, and the classification of speech acts, are then discussed. Based on the conclusions of this discussion a pragmatic method for the analysis of language is formulated.
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Language Inequality and Distortion in Intercultural Communication
Author(s): Yukio TsudaPublication Date January 1986More LessThis study sheds light on the problem of communicative inequality, neglected both by linguists and communication scholars, among speakers of different languages. It provides a four-step Critical Theory analysis of language-based inequality and distortion between speakers of a few dominant languages, especially English, and speakers of minority languages in the context of international and intercultural communication. Based on a theoretical framework of “Distorted Communication” developed by J. Habermas and C. Müller, the analysis focuses on a critical description, definition, and interpretation of “Distorted Intercultural Communication”, and exposes the ideology that legitimates linguistic inequality and distortion in communication.
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Lexical Innovation
Author(s): Karl SornigPublication Date January 1981More LessIn addition to borrowing from various foreign sources, the main origins of slang terms are the activation and revitalization of existing morphological and lexical material. Metaphorical manipulation of lexical items, as the main device used for the production of slangisms, shows remarkable similarities in languages otherwise quite different from each other. Slang is analyzed as a kind of substandard language variation which any full-fledged language is bound to develop because it is experimental in that it is born from insubordination and protest against the stress experienced in the speech communities of large cities and is always characterized by that element of playfulness which is the hallmark of creative language in general.
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Meaning and Reading
Author(s): Michel MeyerPublication Date January 1983More LessAccording to the traditional view, meaning presents itself under the form of some kind of identity. To give the meaning of a sentence amounts to being capable of producing some substitute based on the identity of the terms of the sentence. Is then the meaning of a book, or of any text, the capacity of rewriting it? Instead of retaining a double-standard theory of meaning, one for sentences and another for texts, that would allow for an ad hoc gap, the author provides a unified conception, called the question view of language he has developed, known as problematology. He pursues a systematic analysis of questioning in literature and shows how questioning makes the understanding process possible.
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