The study of questions and answers is challenging for various fields of theoretical linguistics, logic, analytical philosophy, and more recently computer science. Research into questions and answers addresses old and raises new and important questions about the semantics / pragmatics interface and about the dynamics of interpretation. This book brings together current work on the topic as it has been developed in Amsterdam, and congenial academic sites, over the past 15 years. Amsterdam is one of the breeding grounds for the formal study of logic and language, for dynamic semantics, and for the study of questions and answers. It covers the major issues of pragmatic/semantic investigation, including logical relations, context dependence, information structure, and more. It illustrates how semantic/pragmatic stance can be used for problems in other areas of linguistic theorising.

Hardbound. This volume examines explicitly the question of how the semantics and pragmatics of a number of expressions might be responsibly discussed. In the past, the temptation has been for the expressions in question to be discussed either in terms of the semantics, or in terms of the pragmatics, but extremely rarely in terms of both. This book shows how revealing analyses for this interface can be provided for the expressions in question.In specially commissioned chapters from leading authors, the points of view represented include linguistics, logic, computational linguistics, and philosophy.

The Current Research in the Semantic / Pragmatics Interface series has carved out a new and vibrant area of research. This volume offers the reader a state-of-the-art record of new and established research in this area. Von Heusinger and Turner's careful selection of topics and contributors ensures that each chapter integrates semantic and pragmatic facts into a single theory, that each finds an adequate division of theoretical labour and that each attempts to design and corroborate an elegant account of meaning and use that would be compatible with other aspects of human behaviour. Importantly, each paper in the volume focuses on linguistic detail, not merely abstract discussions of a theoretical nature. Thus each paper makes extensive reference to the semantic and pragmatic facts of English and also other languages. This reference gives each of the proposed analyses a more adequate empirical edge and a sharper theoretical focus. This book is a must for all scholars and students interested in the new and vibrant discipline of semantics-pragmatics and to anyone who is fascinated by the prospect of working beyond the traditional disciplinary boundaries of linguistics and the philosophy of language. The chapters in this volume originate from a workshop at the Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute, held at Michigan State University.

A collection of invited papers that intends to explore the nature of the semantics/pragmatics interface by examining the extent to which the analysis of certain expressions or constructions can be pragmaticised. It contains papers that address the topic of 'making pragmatics semantic'.

In Potential Questions at the Semantics-Pragmatics Interface Edgar Onea proposes a novel component for question under discussion based discourse pragmatic theories thereby combining such theories with new ideas from inquisitive semantics. He shows how potential questions account for an entire range of grammatical phenomena. These phenomena include the semantics of indefinite determiners, the meaning contribution of nominal appositives, specificational constructions and non restrictive relative clauses. This book delivers a comprehensive and empirically rich investigation into the role of questions in natural language interpretation. Drawing on data from German, English, Hungarian and Russian, Edgar Onea's study significantly broadens our understanding of conventional sensitivity to questions through formally rigorous analyses of specificational particles, parentheticals and indefinites. The Potential Questions framework offers a new and exciting perspective on utterance meanings as not just addressing, but also raising questions, with important consequences for integrated analyses of discourse structure and discourse relations. This book is essential reading for anybody interested in the semantics-pragmatics interface. Judith Tonhauser, The Ohio State University

This collection of especially invited papers aims to explore the nature of the semantics/pragmatics interface by examining the extent to which the analysis of certain expressions or constructions can be pragmaticised. As the title of the collection implicates, it is anticipated that the theoretical and descriptive burden will move from semantics to pragmatics However not all parts of a linguistic system will yield to a pragmatic treatment. The possibility remains that certain expressions or constructions are more economically and elegantly treated in semantic terms. Thus, this collection also contains papers that address the topic of 'making pragmatics semantic'. This collection contributes to the current interest in examining the division of labour between semantics and pragmatics in the analysis of meaning. All of the papers are at the forefront of knowledge in these matters and each contains original empirical analyses and/or novel theoretical perspectives. This book is relevant to courses in university departments of linguistics, modern languages, philosophy and psychology and to a wide range of university teaching and research.