An Introduction to English Semantics and Pragmatics

An introduction to the linguistic study of meaning, this book outlines the meaning potential (semantics) of English and how language knowledge is put to use (pragmatics).

An Introduction to English Semantics and Pragmatics

Patrick Griffiths

Edinburgh University Press

2017

Abstract

An introduction to the linguistic study of meaning, this book outlines the meaning potential (semantics) of English and how language knowledge is put to use (pragmatics). As well as gaining a systematic overview of meaning in English, readers can learn how to argue for analyses. Among the significant concepts introduced are denotation, sense relations, event types, explicature, implicature, presupposition, metaphor, reference, speech acts and (at an elementary level) Generalised Quantifier Theory. Sense relations - such as antonymy and hyponymy - are presented as summarising patterns of entailment. The sense of a word is seen as the contributions it makes to the entailments carried by sentences. (https://www.amazon.com/)

Contents:

. Unit 1: Studying meaning

. Unit 2: Sense relations

. Unit 3: Nouns

. Unit 4: Adjectives

. Unit 5: Verbs

. Unit 6: Tense and aspect

. Unit 7: Modality, scope and quantification

. Unit 8: Pragmatics

. Unit 9: Figurative language

. Unit 10: Utterances in context

. Unit qq: Doing things with words