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List of contents
Preface and tips on how to read this book; Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations and symbols; Stage 1. Introduction: meaning - what it is and where to find it: 1.1 How (not) to study meaning; 1.2 Semantics, pragmatics, and philosophy (and why they are best done together); 1.3 Proposition: a flexible unit for studying meaning?; 1.4 Meaning and its correlates; Stage 2. word meaning and concepts: 2.1 Harnessing word meaning; 2.2 The 'concept' commotion; 2.3 Language and thought; 2.4 Lexicon and pragmatics; 2.5 The role of reference; Stage 3. Composing sentence meaning: tools and their purpose: 3.1 Truth in service of meaning: truth conditions and truth-value judgements; 3.2 The metalanguage for the logical form; 3.3 Possible worlds and models; 3.4 Semantic composition and semantic types; 3.5 Type-theoretic metalanguage and lambda abstraction; 3.6 Formal tools and cognitive reality; Stage 4. Operations on sentences: 4.1 Sentential connectives and propositional logic; 4.2 Conjunction; 4.3 Disjunction; 4.4 Conditional and biconditional; 4.5 Negation; 4.6 Linguistic diversity: snakes and ladders, cluedo, and monopoly; Stage 5. Inside the sentence: 5.1 Limitations of the metalanguage; 5.2 Quantification; 5.3 Representing time; 5.4 Modality; 5.5 Propositional attitude reports; 5.6 Interim conclusions: semantic tools for formal cognitive representations?; Stage 6. Conveying information: 6.1 From sentences to discourses: dynamic semantics for dynamic meaning; 6.2 Referring and its tools; 6.3 Organizing information in discourse; Stage 7. Utterance meaning, or what lurks under the surface: 7.1 Saying, implicating and inferring; 7.2. Truth-conditional vs. non-truth-conditional, semantic vs. pragmatic: what to include and what to leave out; 7.3 Keeping semantics and pragmatics apart; Stage 8. Meaning in service of its makers: 8.1 Who needs literal meanings?; 8.2 What makes a metaphor; 8.3. Speech and action; 8.4 At a crossroads with ethical and social debates; Stage 9. Conclusion: the future of meaning?; Index.
About the author
Kasia M. Jaszczolt (pronounced Yashchout) is Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy of Language at the University of Cambridge and Professorial Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge. Notable publications include Meaning in Linguistic Interaction (2016, Oxford University Press), Representing Time (2009, Oxford University Press), Default Semantics (2005, Oxford University Press) and The Cambridge Handbook of Pragmatics (co-edited with Keith Allan, 2012, Cambridge University Press).
Summary
Introducing the fields of semantics, pragmatics, and philosophy in one volume, this is a pioneering guide to how to think about meaning like a linguist and philosopher. It covers key theories and approaches, while also enabling the reader to ask increasingly more sophisticated questions about the interconnected aspects of meaning.
Foreword
Combining semantics, pragmatics, and philosophy, this is a guide on how to think about meaning like a linguist and philosopher.
