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21505 results in English language and linguistics: general interest

Page 291 of 1076

  • 9 - Discourse Meaning and Pragmatics

  • Javier Valenzuela, Universidad de Murcia, Spain
  • Book:
    Meaning in English
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    19 April 2017, pp 233-263

  • Summary

    In this chapter …

    We examine how people interpret linguistic material in the wider realm of discourse comprehension. In order to recover the communicative intention of the speaker, we normally have to go beyond the words uttered and enrich them with inferences derived from the context at hand. This thorny issue becomes more tractable if we consider language as a collaborative activity: meaning is constructed from the speaker's linguistic cues and the hearer's understanding of the contextual situation. Both participants in the communicative setting derive expectations about the intentions of their interlocutor from the context and the goals of the social situation they are engaged in. In this chapter, the complex notion of context will be divided into: (1) information that comes from the physical place and time where the communication takes place; (2) the context provided by what has been said so far (called the co-text); and (3) context provided by the shared knowledge between speaker and hearer. For this last type of context, we will resort to the notion of ‘common ground’ (the knowledge that both speaker and hearer are aware that they share with each other) as well as to our knowledge of scenes and frames. We will see how knowing the way in which we are supposed to interact with the other person provides a great wealth of information that facilitates the recovery of inferences. We will also examine two classic notions in pragmatics, Grice's Conversational Maxims and Searle's Speech Acts, in connection with the general framework described in the chapter.

    Discourse, Context and Use

    What words mean is a matter of what people mean by them

    (Grice, 1975: 340)

    In this last chapter, like in all good stories, it is time to try to tie up all the loose ends, always a challenging task in the field of semantics. So far, we have been looking at how we construct meaning by examining the types of meaning evoked by the different linguistic levels, mainly the lexical one. We have spent some time looking at the meanings associated with words (Chapter 4), how words can refer to different meanings (i.e., polysemy; Chapter 5), and how word meanings are related to each other (Chapter 5); we have also seen how the meanings activated by verbs and other predicates organize the meaning of sentences (along with constructional meanings) in Chapter 8.

Meaning in English
  • An Introduction
  • Javier Valenzuela
  • Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    19 April 2017
  • This lively, compact textbook introduces readers to semantics - the study of how we construct meaning in communication. Easy to follow, and with a clear structure, it explains formal terminology in a simple and understandable way, without using formal notation or logic, and draws on dozens of examples from up-to-date empirical research findings. Offering a tight integration of classic semantic issues with cognitive science, Javier Valenzuela provides a complete and coherent overview of the main topics in this area, including a review of the empirical methods used in semantic theorizing, and discussions of both non-traditional and new topics, such as how meaning is acquired by children and how meaning is constructed cross-linguistically. Featuring illustrations, exercises, activities, suggestions for further reading, highlighted key terms, and a comprehensive glossary, this book is accessible to beginners and undergraduates, including those from non-linguistic backgrounds with no prior knowledge of linguistic analysis. It will be an essential resource for courses in English language, English studies, linguistics and the cognitive sciences.

  • 7 - Figurative Meaning

  • Javier Valenzuela, Universidad de Murcia, Spain
  • Book:
    Meaning in English
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    19 April 2017, pp 170-201

  • Summary

    In this chapter …

    In this chapter, we go beyond the literal meaning of words and examine figurative meaning. The cases in which language cannot be understood literally are incredibly abundant, and figurative mechanisms such as hyperbole, understatement, irony or tautology, to name a few, are extremely common. We will focus on two figurative mechanisms that have attracted a great deal of attention in the last decades: metaphor and metonymy. This chapter will introduce the main ideas behind Conceptual Metaphor Theory, which provides a tentative (though plausible) explanation for the extension of embodiment to abstract domains. We will take a look at the different types of metaphor, their behaviour and their possible origins. We will also review empirical work that has examined their conceptual nature. In the second part of the chapter, we will take a look at the important notion of conceptual metonymy, which is often explained alongside metaphor and is just as essential in any explanation of how meaning is constructed and communicated.

    Metaphor and metonymy have proved very useful as commonsense explanatory mechanisms for many central topics in semantics. For example, they are among the main mechanisms that extend the meanings of words in a principled way; this chapter will look at their role in the establishment of regular polysemy patterns. The chapter closes with a critical evaluation of the theory.

    Introduction: Literal vs. Figurative Language

    Whenever we invoke notions such as ‘figurative language’, ‘metaphor’, ‘metonymy’ and the like, the first thing that comes to mind is literary language. Typical examples of metaphor are phrases like your eyes are stars or your teeth are pearls, a type of language that is associated with poetry, song lyrics or literature in general, and does not correspond to the way people normally speak. There is a very clear separation between what constitutes ‘normal’ (or literal) language and what is ‘figurative’ language. If somebody told you that your teeth are pearls, you would have to reject the initial, completely impossible literal interpretation, and would have to go on trying to construct another meaning, this time a non-literal, figurative one (probably something like ‘your teeth are white and shiny’).

    For a long time, this was the way most people thought figurative language worked. However, in recent times this view has been challenged.

  • Introduction: The Language Machine

  • Olaf Koeneman, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, Hedde Zeijlstra, Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, Germany
  • Book:
    Introducing Syntax
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    13 April 2017, pp 1-6

  • Summary

    We humans are surrounded by technology. We have machines for almost everything and computers allow us to achieve things that were long deemed impossible. We live in a day and age where dreams can become reality overnight due to technical innovation, and the amount of information that we have access to via a tiny machine in our pockets is simply astounding. There is talk right now about flying people to Mars and growing tomatoes there. Yes, we humans are a smart bunch.

    Despite all this, there are some things we are still unable to do, and some machines we simply cannot build. And some of these failures have to do with language. A machine that can translate one language into another language perfectly? No, we don't have it (and please don't insult us by referring to Google Translate). Okay, how about something more modest, like a machine that can for any combinations of words in a single language (say, English) say whether it is a good sentence or not? It is perhaps hard to believe but even that is still out of our reach. Language, as it turns out, is an evasive and slippery creature.

    At the same time, it is clear that such a machine, capable of stating for every English sentence whether it is grammatical or not, does exist. In fact, we have about 360 million of those machines on our planet. They are called native speakers of English. These speakers have at their disposal the knowledge of their mother tongue, English, and this knowledge can generate zillions of distinct combinations of English words and evaluate each of them, whether old or new, as being either a good sentence or not. Probably you have never heard someone say Syntax is one of the most fascinating topics in linguistic theory, but if you are a native speaker of English you know immediately that the sentence is grammatically correct (and hopefully after reading this book you will also find it to be correct content-wise). So these native speaker brains can do something that we cannot imitate with any man-made machine. The fact that we cannot mimic such everyday human language behaviour shows us that there is something worthwhile studying.

  • 7 - Unifying Movement and Agreement

  • Olaf Koeneman, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, Hedde Zeijlstra, Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, Germany
  • Book:
    Introducing Syntax
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    13 April 2017, pp 164-193

  • Summary

    CHAPTER OUTLINE

    We have seen that words or constituents can remerge. Remerge, also known as movement, explains a lot of things. Thanks to Remerge we are able to understand that a constituent can appear in a position far removed from the case and θ-role assigner on which it depends. And, by assuming that subjects start out in the VP and are subsequently remerged, we are able to treat all syntactic dependencies on a par, including the previously problematic nominative case relation between a subject and Fin. But what we don't yet understand is why elements must remerge. Why do subjects remerge into FinP, and Wh-phrases into CP? In this chapter we address this question, and we will conclude that the same feature-checking mechanism that we have already used to characterise syntactic dependencies provides us with the trigger for such instances of Remerge.

    Insight: Agreement Triggers Remerge

    In the previous chapter, we established that constituents – heads and phrases alike – can be remerged into the structure we build, thereby giving rise to the effect that we know as movement. By adopting this notion of Remerge we were able to understand a number of phenomena that would otherwise remain rather mysterious. In addition, it allowed us to maintain generalisations that would otherwise be lost, such as our unified characterisation of syntactic dependencies in terms of [F]–[uF] feature checking.

    The fact that we can analyse certain phenomena as involving Remerge, however, does nothing to explain why these instances of Remerge actually take place. Take two significant Remerge operations that we have considered: (i) Remerge of a Wh-constituent to a clause-initial position and (ii) Remerge of the subject from VP to FinP.

    (1) a. Which yellow chair has Adrian always liked <which yellow chair>?

    b. The teachers are all <the teachers> dancing on the table.

    Assuming that Remerge has taken place in (1a) allowed us to maintain our restrictions on case agreement, and to assume that θ-role assignment is strictly local, and always takes place within the VP. These reasons also accounted for remerger of the subject in (1a) from spec-VP to spec-FinP, and for the presence of the floating quantifier all between the auxiliary and main verb.

  • 5 - Agreement and Uninterpretable Features

  • Olaf Koeneman, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, Hedde Zeijlstra, Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, Germany
  • Book:
    Introducing Syntax
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    13 April 2017, pp 110-137

  • Summary

    CHAPTER OUTLINE

    In the previous chapter we encountered a particular syntactic dependency: case. Even though sentences containing constituents with the wrong case marking would be semantically good, syntax does not allow them. In this chapter we will see that case is not the only kind of syntactic dependency that can be identified. There are more constructions that, from a semantic perspective, would be good, but that syntax does not like. For instance, sentences like *I walks (instead of I walk) or *She walk (instead of She walks) are bad. Other examples are sentences like *John hopes that Mary loves himself (instead of John hopes that Mary loves him), or *I love me (instead of I love myself). These sentences are clearly ungrammatical, even though it is not that hard to figure out what they could mean. The big question that arises is whether all these syntactic dependencies are different in nature, or underlyingly the same. The latter would be the best outcome, since in that event there is only one mechanism in syntax that we need to understand rather than several. Indeed it turns out that all these syntactic dependencies are the result of a single mechanism: agreement.

    Insight: Agreement Reflects Syntactic Dependencies

    The previous two chapters introduced two main constraints on what you can create with the Merge operation: θ-theory and Case theory. θ-theory is essentially a semantic constraint; verbal categories that merge with too few or too many arguments yield degraded sentences, since the meaning of the verb dictates how many arguments it should merge with. θ-theory has an effect on syntax, since it partly determines the structural size, but it is not a syntactic constraint. Case theory, by contrast, is a syntactic constraint. Sentences that are perfect from a semantic point of view (She loves I instead of She loves me) are ruled out by the syntax. Every DP should be assigned case, and particular structural positions are responsible for particular case assignments.

    A question that may now arise is whether there are more syntactic dependencies than just those involving case assignment. The answer is yes.

  • Afterword

  • Olaf Koeneman, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, Hedde Zeijlstra, Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, Germany
  • Book:
    Introducing Syntax
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    13 April 2017, pp 268-279

  • Summary

    In this book, we have moved from looking at the grammar of English as a set of basically arbitrary rules toward looking at the grammar of English as a set of rules that are the result of a restricted set of principles underlying them. To put it differently, we have uncovered several fundamental patterns underneath the surface rules.

    Here is an example. The fact that in English a Wh-constituent must be in clause-initial position is a surface rule that is caused by the underlying fundamental principle for interpretable features to c-command their uninterpretable counterparts. The former (surface) rule is not fundamental for English, the latter is: the former is a consequence of the latter and not the other way around. And the latter principle captures not just the surface rule that Wh-constituents appear in clause-initial position, but it captures all syntactic dependencies.

    Another one. The rule that in English you must say eat a sausage and not a sausage eat is not an arbitrary fact about verbs and objects in English but follows from the more fundamental choice in English to linearise complements after their heads. This is not just true for verbs and objects but also for determiners and nominal phrases, and for complementisers and clauses. It is, in fact, the rule within English phrases in general.

    Many more examples can be given. Syntacticians try to capture general, underlying patterns on the basis of the surface patterns we observe, and formalise these into a theory. The theory we developed in this way for English meets a couple of requirements we can set for any scientific theory:

  • (i) The theory is uniform in a lot of ways because it is based on generalisations that go beyond the surface data, as just explained. Syntax, we conclude, is not a machine with 200 distinct operations but offers a highly constrained way of building phrases and sentences: it is basically Merge plus a constraint on feature checking (every uninterpretable feature needs to be checked by a matching local c-commanding interpretable feature).

  • (ii) The theory is highly explicit. It does not say ‘Well, we have certain constituents in some kind of structure that have to be able to see each other in some way or other.’ No, we say that an interpretable feature must c-command its uninterpretable counterpart.

Page 291 of 1076