Words and the Grammar of Context (Volume 40) (Lecture Notes) - Softcover

Kay, Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1881526178 ISBN 13: 9781881526179

Publisher: Center for the Study of Language and Inf, 2001

Synopsis

Research in linguistic semantics may be roughly divided into two broad traditions. Students concerned with lexical fields and lexical domains ('lexical semanticists') have interested themselves in the paradigmatic relations of contrast that obtain among related lexical items and the substantive detail of how particular lexical items map to the nonlinguistic objects they stand for. 'Formal semanticists' (those who study the combinatorial properties of word meanings) have been mostly unconcerned with these issues, concentrating rather on how the meanings of individual words, whatever their internal structure may be and however they may be paradigmatically related to one another, combine into the meanings of phrases and sentences (and recently, to some extent, texts).

About this title

About the Author

Paul Kay is emeritus professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. He joined the University in 1966 as a member of the Department of Anthropology, transferred to the Department of Linguistics in 1982, and then became a Senior Researcher in artificial intelligence at the International Computer Science Institute. He is best known for his work with Brent Berlin on color, first published in Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution.

From the Back Cover

In this collection, Paul Kay relates two usually separate traditions of semantic research: the meanings of words and the contextual determination of interpretation. Kay argues that the currently accepted views of semantic compositionality, Gricean effects, and indexicality are necessary, but not sufficient, to bridge the gap between the conventional significations of linguistic objects and the interpretations that sentences receive in contexts. Although not alone in this view, Kay's radical contribution to this general line of thought is his claim that the kind of theory of 'indexicality' required by the facts must be able to avail itself of the recursive (in Chomsky's sense 'creative') aspect of language. Expressions which have context-indexing force cannot be listed; they can be freely generated. Ultimately, Kay is interested in language as a medium of communication: attempting to understand the role of grammar in the activities of both speakers and interlocutors.

Edition details

• Publisher: Center for the Study of Language and Inf
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1881526178
• ISBN 13: 9781881526179
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 281