Search results for "language and linguistics"
showing 10 items of 3275 documents
Between Composition and Emergentness: A Cognitive Semantics Re-Reading of the Way-Construction
2016
This study re-analyzes the English way-construction by having recourse to diverse concepts and tools of Talmy’s cognitive semantics. Drawing on his theory of recombinance and its relevance for conceptualizing the construction, the article implements Talmy’s theory of event integration, categorizes the way-construction as an instantiation of the open path event frame, considers link-ups of the schematic systems of force dynamics and attention as they become instantiated in the construction, and probes into its motion-aspect patterning, grounded in a conformation of space and time and resulting in a strategy that is called de-conflation. Further, it will recruit Talmy’s types of semantic conf…
From Mood to Meaning: The Changing Model of the User in Entertainment Research
2015
In recent years, entertainment theory has undergone a paradigmatic shift: The traditional conceptualization of entertainment as an exclusively pleasurable affective state has been significantly extended by recent two-factor models. These models have introduced a second dimension of entertainment that incorporates more complex nonhedonic experiences, such as the search for meaning or intrinsic need satisfaction. They have not only crucially altered the way communication scholars conceptualize the audience of media entertainment but also our discipline's view on the effects of entertaining media content. The present article discusses the implications of this changing model of the media user b…
Book Review: Interaction and Second Language Development: A Vygotskian Perspective
2016
On how to legitimately constrain a semantic theory
2021
Abstract Semanticists often restrict their theories by imposing constraints on the parameters that can be employed for interpreting the expressions of a language. Such constraints are based on non-logical features of actual contexts of utterance, but they often have important effects on issues that do pertain to logic, like analyticity or entailment. For example, Kaplan’s restriction to so-called “proper contexts” was required in order to count “I am here now” as valid. In this paper I argue that constraints of this kind are often posited in an arbitrary and non-consistent way, and that they yield the intended results only at the price of imposing ad hoc principles whose justification could…
Puentes entre la Lingüística computacional y la Psicolingüística
2011
[EN] Cognitive sciences have assumed that there can be relationships between various disciplines such as Philosophy, Linguistics, Anthropology, Artificial Intelligence, or Psychology. This work aims to make explicit these relations between the Psycholinguistics and Computational Linguistics.
Default Semantics and the architecture of the mind
2011
In this paper, I explore the relationship between Relevance Theory and Jaszczolt's Default Semantics, framing this debate within the picture of massive modularity tempered by the idea of brain plasticity (Perkins, 2007). While Relevance Theory focuses on processing (see cognitive efforts and contextual effects interplay), Default Semantics focuses on types of sources from which addressees draw information and types of processes that interact in providing it. In particular, I argue that Relevance Theory interacts with default semantics by standardizing inferences which are ultimately compressed (to use a term by Bach, 1998) into a default semantics. I briefly discuss potential obstacles to t…
What Can Modularity of Mind Tell Us about the Semantics/Pragmatics Debate?
2010
In this paper I make connections between two domains of information, research on the semantics/pragmatics debate and on modularity of mind, in the hope that establishing connections and parallel structure may be fruitful in deepening knowledge of the interface between semantics and pragmatics. In particular I want to inquire if modularity of mind can help us move towards the resolution of important theoretical problems like Grice's circle, the cancellability of explicatures/implicatures, the analogy between perceptual enrichments and explicatures due to free enrichments, the routing problem for explicatures (do they strictly take input from implicatures?), and satisficing strategies in prag…
Classifiers, Quantifiers and Class Nouns in Hmong
1993
Four operations of nominal concretization are crucial for presenting a typology of classifier languages: individualization, classification, relationalization (possession), and referentialization. The first three of these operations are at work in the Hmong classifier system. The development of classifiers is described in connection with the degree of grammaticalization which will be measured by the three parameters of [± exact], [± entity], and cohesion. These parameters will be arranged in a three-dimensional continuum (cf. Fig. II.) which leads to the following evolutional steps of increasing grammaticalization: nouns, class nouns, quantifiers, intrinsic quantifiers (to be defined in the …
Classifiers in Sinitic languages: From individuation to definiteness-marking
2012
Abstract This article examines the distribution and interpretation of the bare classifier phrase [Cl+N] in three Sinitic languages of Mandarin, Wu and Cantonese. We show that [Cl+N] can be interpreted as definite or indefinite depending on pragmatic factors related to information structure and word order. Syntactically, we claim that indefinite [Cl+N] has the maximal projection of ClP and that definite [Cl+N] is a DP, where the D head is filled by the classifier via Cl-to-D raising. Semantically, we claim that indefinite [Cl+N] is predicative, denoting sets of atomic entities and that definite [Cl+N] is derived from indefinite [Cl+N] by lifting it from predicates to Generalized Quantifiers.…
Polskie nazwy miejscowości z sufiksem -at-ka
2017
The article analyses Polish oikonyms ending in -atka, discussing whether this ending is a suffix, i.e. -at-ka, or simply appears to be one. Based on the method of morphological division, the findings suggest the existence of two distinctive groups of oikonyms: those with the suffix -at-ka, and those with three extended variants of this suffix: -ow-at-ka, -aw-at-ka and -ew-at-ka.