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.

While lying has been a topic in the philosophy of language, there has been a lack of genuine linguistic analysis of lying. Exploring lying at the semantics-pragmatics interface, this book takes a contextualist stand by arguing that untruthful implicatures and presuppositions are part of the total signification of the act of lying.

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 book explores new territory at the interface between semantics and pragmatics, reassessing a number of linguistic phenomena in the light of recent advances in pragmatic theory. It presents stimulating insights by experts in linguistics and philosophy, including Kent Bach, Philippe de Brabanter, Max Kölbel and François Recanati. The authors begin by reassessing the definition of four theoretical concepts: saturation, free pragmatic enrichment, completion and expansion. They go on to confront (sub)disciplines that have addressed similar issues but that have not necessarily been in close contact, and then turn to questions related to reported speech, modality, indirect requests and prosody. Chapters investigate lexical pragmatics and (cognitive) lexical semantics and other interactions involving experimental pragmatics, construction grammar, clinical linguistics, and the distinction between mental and linguistic content. The authors bridge the gap between different disciplines, subdisciplines and methodologies, supporting cross-fertilization of ideas and indicating the empirical studies that are needed to test current theoretical concepts and push the theory further. Readers will find overviews of the ways in which concepts are defined, empirical data with which they are illustrated and explorations of the theoretical frameworks in which concepts are couched. This exciting exchange of ideas has its origins in the editors’ workshop series on the theme ‘The semantics/pragmatics interface: linguistic, logical and philosophical perspectives’, held at the University of Lille 3 in 2012-13. Scholars of linguistics, logic and philosophy and those interested in the research benefits of crossing disciplines will find this work both accessible and thought-provoking, especially those with an interest in pragmatic theory or semantics.

The ten volumes of "Handbook of Pragmatics Highlights" focus on the most salient topics in the field of pragmatics, thus dividing its wide interdisciplinary spectrum in a transparent and manageable way. While the other volumes select specific cognitive, grammatical, social, cultural, variational, interactional, or discursive angles, this 10th volume focuses on the interface between pragmatics and philosophy and reviews the philosophical background from which pragmatics has taken inspiration and with which it is constantly confronted. It provides the reader with information about authors relevant to the development of pragmatics, trends or areas in philosophy that are relevant for the definition of the main concepts in pragmatics or the characterization of its cultural context, the neighbouring field of semantics (with particular respect to truth-conditional semantics and some main branches of formal semantics), and recent philosophical debates that involve pragmatic notions such as indexicality and context. While most of the references are to the analytic philosophical field, also perspectives in so-called continental philosophy are taken into account. The introductory chapter outlines some unifying routes of reflection as regards meaning, speech as action, and self and mind, and suggests some connections between doing pragmatics and doing philosophy.

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