In this volume leading researchers present new work on the semantics and pragmatics of adjectives and adverbs, and their interfaces with syntax. Its concerns include the semantics of gradability; the relationship between adjectival scales and verbal aspect; the relationship between meaning and the positions of adjectives and adverbs in nominal and verbal projections; and the fi...(展开全部)

Semantics is a core topic on the majority of undergraduate linguistic degree courses: it is the study of meaning in language, both in terms of definition and the way meanings are conveyed and vary within everyday situations. This book provides a comprehensive introduction to approaches to meaning and presents the most popular and successful theories in a way that makes them ac...(展开全部)

After his earlier book Discourse and Context, also published by Cambridge University Press, Teun A. van Dijk in this study presents the second part of his new multidisciplinary theory of context. The main thesis of this theory is that the influence of society on discourse is not direct, as is postulated for instance in sociolinguistics, but cognitively mediated by subjective me...(展开全部)

This volume takes a critical approach to the study of prejudice and discrimination by focusing on the role of elites in the reproduction of racism. Van Dijk's main thesis is that racism in North America and Europe is primarily 'top down' and preformulated by the elites, and is not only - as the elites would have it - a 'popular' phenomenon. The book opens with a wide-ranging st...(展开全部)

Now available in paperback, this book is a critical introduction to discourse analysis as it is practised in a variety of different disciplines today, from linguistics and sociolinguistics to sociology and cultural studies. The author shows how concern with the analysis of discourse can be combined, in a systematic and fruitful way, with an interest in broader problems of socia...(展开全部)

The view that language is in some way 'arbitrary', that there is no formal relationship between a linguistic message and the thought it is meant to convey, is long established and pervasive. The goal of John Haiman's study is to challenge the monopoly of arbitrariness, which he believes has affected in significant ways many models of linguistic description and analysis, notably...(展开全部)

Language is a system of communication in which grammatical structures function to express meaning in context. While all languages can achieve the same basic communicative ends, they each use different means to achieve them, particularly in the divergent ways that syntax, semantics and pragmatics interact across languages. This book looks in detail at how structure, meaning, and...(展开全部)

Since its first publication, Language Universals and Linguistic Typology has become established as the leading introductory account of one of the most productive areas of linguistics—the analysis, comparison, and classification of the common features and forms of the organization of languages. Adopting an approach to the subject pioneered by Greenberg and others, Bernard Comrie...(展开全部)

What does 'if' mean? It is one of the most commonly used words in the English language, in itself a sign to the importance of conditional thinking to human cognitive life. We make conditional statements, ask conditional questions, and issue conditional orders. We need to think and talk conditionally for many purposes, from everyday decision-making to mathematical proof. Yet the...(展开全部)