Aphasia’s Implications for Linguistics Research: Exploring the Interface Between Semantics and Pragmatics

This volume stresses the importance of a multidisciplinary perspective in deepening knowledge of the interface between semantics and pragmatics. It thoroughly investigates concepts belonging to Neo-Gricean and post-Gricean theories. Theoretical research in pragmatics has challenged the idea of a close relation between literal meaning and the explicitly conveyed proposition, claiming that situational context is responsible for an ongoing process of adjusting and revising what a speaker says. Similarly, recent discoveries from the clinical side have highlighted the importance of extra-linguistic sources and the cognitive context in the syntactic and semantic competence of people with language disorders. The productive comparison between reflections from theoretical pragmatics and the most recent developments in cognitive sciences provides an authentic way of addressing traditional philosophical issues, moving them to a new fertile ground. The research herein is gathered across disciplines to provide theoretical and clinical contributions and collaborations, making this book broadly appropriate to students, researchers and professionals in the fields.

Roberto Graci has a PhD in Cognitive Sciences from the University of Messina. His work focuses on the communicative competence of people with aphasia and its implication on the semantics/pragmatics debate. He has published several papers emphasising the productive comparison between theoretical pragmatics and speech-language pathology. Roberto Graci has also actively participated in important events on linguistics and philosophy of language, including Pragmasophia 3 and the XIV Congress of SIFA (Italian Society of Analytical Philosophy).