The Pragmatics of Multiword Terms

The Pragmatics of Multiword Terms PDF

Author: Melania Cabezas-García

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-02-29

Total Pages: 173

ISBN-13: 1003845568

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This book explores the pragmatics of specialized language with a focus on multiword terms, complex phrases characterized by sequences of nouns or adjectives whose meaning is clarified in the unspecified but implicit links between them, with implications for their use and translation. The volume adopts an innovative approach rooted in Frame-Based Terminology which allows for the analysis of multiword – compound terms in specialized language, such as horizontal-axis wind turbine – term formation from an integrated semantic and pragmatic perspective. The book features data from a corpus on wind power in English, Spanish, and French comprising such specialized texts as research articles, books, reports, and PhD theses to consider term extraction and the identification of terminological correspondences. Cabezas-García highlights the ways in which pragmatic analysis is an integral part of understanding multiword terms, due to the necessary inference of information implicit within them, with applications for future research on pragmatics and specialized language more broadly. This book will be of interest to students and researchers in pragmatics, semantics, corpus linguistics, and terminology.

Multiword expressions

Multiword expressions PDF

Author: Manfred Sailer

Publisher: Language Science Press

Published:

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 3961100632

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Multiword expressions (MWEs) are a challenge for both the natural language applications and the linguistic theory because they often defy the application of the machinery developed for free combinations where the default is that the meaning of an utterance can be predicted from its structure. There is a rich body of primarily descriptive work on MWEs for many European languages but comparative work is little. The volume brings together MWE experts to explore the benefits of a multilingual perspective on MWEs. The ten contributions in this volume look at MWEs in Bulgarian, English, French, German, Maori, Modern Greek, Romanian, Serbian, and Spanish. They discuss prominent issues in MWE research such as classification of MWEs, their formal grammatical modeling, and the description of individual MWE types from the point of view of different theoretical frameworks, such as Dependency Grammar, Generative Grammar, Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Lexical Functional Grammar, Lexicon Grammar.

Word-Formation

Word-Formation PDF

Author: Peter O. Müller

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2015-09-14

Total Pages: 838

ISBN-13: 3110375737

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This handbook comprises an in-depth presentation of the state of the art in word-formation. The five volumes contain 207 articles written by leading international scholars. The XVI chapters of the handbook provide the reader, in both general articles and individual studies, with a wide variety of perspectives: word-formation as a linguistic discipline (history of science, theoretical concepts), units and processes in word-formation, rules and restrictions, semantics and pragmatics, foreign word-formation, language planning and purism, historical word-formation, word-formation in language acquisition and aphasia, word-formation and language use, tools in word-formation research. The final chapter comprises 74 portraits of word-formation in the individual languages of Europe and offers an innovative perspective. These portraits afford the first overview of this kind and will prove useful for future typological research. This handbook will provide an essential reference for both advanced students and researchers in word-formation and related fields within linguistics.

Pragmatics and the Flexibility of Word Meaning

Pragmatics and the Flexibility of Word Meaning PDF

Author: Eniko Nemeth

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2022-02-22

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 0585474265

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Recently, the investigation of word meaning in utterances has connected two different fields: lexical semantics and pragmatics. A new linguistic discipline, namely lexical pragmatics, is emerging. The eleven papers of the present book constitute a unit in the sense that they have a common aim: to explore the interaction between lexical semantics and pragmatics. The authors examine phenomena such as productive sense extension, regular polysemy, multifunctionality, implicit arguments and predicates, and non-typical anaphoric pronouns, on the basis of linguistic data, for instance, from English, Norwegian, Russian, and Hungarian, as well as using a great variety of frameworks (optimality framework, two-level semantics, the theory of generative lexicon, cognitive grammar, Gricean theory, and relevance theory.

Pragmatics of Word Order Flexibility

Pragmatics of Word Order Flexibility PDF

Author: Doris L. Payne

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 1992-01-01

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 9027229058

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For some time the assumption has been widely held that for a majority of the world's languages, one can identify a "basic" order of subject and object relative to the verb, and that when combined with other facts of the language, the "basic" order constitutes a useful way of typologizing languages. New debate has arisen over varying definitions of "basic," with investigators encountering languages where branding a particular order of grammatical relations as basic yielded no particular insightfulness. This work asserts that explanatory factors behind word order variation go beyond the syntactic and are to be found in studies of how the mind grammaticizes forms, processes information, and speech act theory considerations of speakers' attempts to get their hearers to build one, rather than another, mental representation of incoming information. Thus three domains must be distinguished in understanding order variation: syntactic, cognitive and pragmatic. The works in this volume explore various aspects of this assertion.

Word-formation and Creolisation

Word-formation and Creolisation PDF

Author: Maria Braun

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 3484305177

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This book explores a relatively little investigated area of creole languages, word-formation. It provides the most comprehensive account so far of the word-formation patterns of an English-based creole language, Sranan, as found in its earliest sources, and compares them with the patterns attested in the input languages. One of the few studies of creole morphology based on historical data, the book discusses the theoretical problems arising with the historical analysis of creole word-formation and provides an analysis along the lines of Booij's (2005, 2007) Construction Morphology in which the assumed boundaries between affixation, compounding and syntactic constructions play a very minor role. It shows that Early Sranan word-formation is characterised by the absence of superstrate derivational affixes, the use of free morphemes as derivational markers and of compounding as the major word-formation strategy. The emergence of Early Sranan word-formation involved multiple sources (the input languages, universals, language-internal development) and different mechanisms (reanalysis of free morphemes as derivational markers, adaptation of superstrate complex words, transfer from the substrates and the creation of innovations). The findings render untenable theoretical accounts of creole genesis based on one explanatory factor, such as superstrate or substrate influence.

The Pragmatic Turn in Law

The Pragmatic Turn in Law PDF

Author: Janet Giltrow

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2017-06-12

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 150150472X

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In legal interpretation, where does meaning come from? Law is made from language, yet law, unlike other language-related disciplines, has not so far experienced its "pragmatic turn" towards inference and the construction of meaning. This book investigates to what extent a pragmatically based view of l linguistic and legal interpretation can lead to new theoretical views for law and, in addition, to practical consequences in legal decision-making. With its traditional emphasis on the letter of the law and the immutable stability of a text as legal foundation, law has been slow to take the pragmatic perspective: namely, the language-user 's experience and activity in making meaning. More accustomed to literal than to pragmatic notions of meaning, that is, in the text rather than constructed by speakers and hearers the disciplines of law may be culturally resistant to the pragmatic turn. By bringing together the different but complementary perspectives of pragmaticians and lawyers, this book addresses the issue of to what extent legal meaning can be productively analysed as deriving from resources beyond the text, beyond the letter of the law. This collection re-visits the feasibility of the notion of literal meaning for legal interpretation and, at the same time, the feasibility of pragmatic meaning for law. Can explications of pragmatic meaning support court actions in the same way concepts of literal meaning have traditionally supported statutory interpretations and court judgements? What are the consequences of a user-based view of language for the law, in both its practices of interpretation and its definition of itself as a field? Readers will find in this collection means of approaching such questions, and promising routes for inquiry into the genre- and field-specific characteristics of inference in law. In many respects, the problem of literal vs. pragmatic meaning confined to the text vs. reaching beyond it will appear to parallel the dichotomy in law between textualism and intentionalism. There are indeed illuminating connections between the pair of linguistic terms and the more publicly controversial legal ones. But the parallel is not exact, and the linguistic dichotomy is in any case anterior to the legal one. Even as linguistic-pragmatic investigation may serve legal domains, the legal questions themselves point back to central conditions of all linguistic meaning.

Establishing a Mechanism-Based Framework for the Corpus-Informed Analysis of Multi-Word Discourse Markers

Establishing a Mechanism-Based Framework for the Corpus-Informed Analysis of Multi-Word Discourse Markers PDF

Author: Jan-Friso Heeren

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-10-11

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 3658395079

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This book establishes and applies a linguistic framework for the synchronic and diachronic analysis of multi-word discourse markers (MWDMs). The aim of this study is to examine in detail how MWDMs have developed out of their polysemous lexical counterparts. First, this study critically evaluates existing Grammaticalization and Pragmaticalization theories addressing both their strengths and drawbacks. In the following, a revised Pragmaticalization approach is developed. Considering three linguistic dimensions, this approach consists of six mechanisms: Discursivization & Scope Extension (semantic dimension), Syntactic Isolation & Acategorialization (syntactic dimension) and Consistency & Prosodic Accentuation (phonological dimension). Using data from the Oxford Etymological Dictionary and the TV Corpus, the study then applies these mechanisms to the MWDMs by the way, all the same and what is more. Providing a detailed corpus-informed analysis of these units, this book demonstrates the advantages of the suggested framework and consequently offers an innovative contribution to the field of linguistics.

Analyzing meaning

Analyzing meaning PDF

Author: Paul R. Kroeger

Publisher: Language Science Press

Published:

Total Pages: 502

ISBN-13: 3961101361

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This book provides an introduction to the study of meaning in human language, from a linguistic perspective. It covers a fairly broad range of topics, including lexical semantics, compositional semantics, and pragmatics. The chapters are organized into six units: (1) Foundational concepts; (2) Word meanings; (3) Implicature (including indirect speech acts); (4) Compositional semantics; (5) Modals, conditionals, and causation; (6) Tense & aspect. Most of the chapters include exercises which can be used for class discussion and/or homework assignments, and each chapter contains references for additional reading on the topics covered. As the title indicates, this book is truly an INTRODUCTION: it provides a solid foundation which will prepare students to take more advanced and specialized courses in semantics and/or pragmatics. It is also intended as a reference for fieldworkers doing primary research on under-documented languages, to help them write grammatical descriptions that deal carefully and clearly with semantic issues. The approach adopted here is largely descriptive and non-formal (or, in some places, semi-formal), although some basic logical notation is introduced. The book is written at level which should be appropriate for advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate students. It presupposes some previous coursework in linguistics, but does not presuppose any background in formal logic or set theory.

Pragmatics and Semantics

Pragmatics and Semantics PDF

Author: Carol A. Kates

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2020-02-15

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13: 1501752189

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What is the nature of communicative competence? Carol Kates addresses this crucial linguistic question, examining and finally rejecting the rationalistic theory proposed by Noam Chomsky and elaborated by Jerrold J. Katz, among others. She sets forth three reasons why the rationalistic model shoudl be rejected: (1) it has not been supported by empirical tests; (2) it cannot accommodate the pragmatic relation between speaker and sign; and (3) the theory of universal grammar carries with it unacceptable metaphysical implications unless it is interpreted in light of empiricism. Kates proposes an empiricist model in place of the rationalistic theory—a model that, in her view, is more consistent with recent findings in linguistics and psycholinguistics. In attempting to clarify the nature of utterance meaning, Kates develops theoretical perspectives on phenomenological empiricism and produces an account of reference and intentionality directly relevant to empiricaly based theories of speaking and understanding. Among the major topics addressed in the book are transformational-generative and universal grammer, cognitive theories of language acquisition, pragmatic structure, predication and topic-comment structure, and empiricism and the philosophical problem of universals. An innovative and probing work, Pragmatics and Semantics will be welcomed by philosophers, linguists, and psycholinguists.