Semantics and Pragmatics
- Aitchison, J. (1994) Words in the Mind: An Introduction to the mental Lexicon. Oxford: Blackwell.
- Blakemore, D. (1992) Understanding Utterances. Oxford: Blackwell.
- Chierchia, G., & McConnell-Ginet, S. (1990) Meaning and Grammar: An Introduction to Semantics. Cambridge Mass. and London: MIT Press.
- Cruse, D.A. (1986) Lexical Semantics. Cambridge: CUP.
- Cruse, D.A. (2000) Meaning in Language: An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics. Oxford: OUP.
- Davis, S. (ed.) (1991) Pragmatics: A Reader. Oxford: OUP.
- Grice, H.P. (1989) Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
- Heim, I., and Kratzer, A. (1998) Semantics in Generative Grammar. Oxford: Blackwell.
- Hudson, R. (1995) Word Meaning. London and New York: Routledge.
- Jackendoff, R. (1990) Semantic Structures. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
- Jackson, H. (1988) Words and their Meaning. London: Longman.
- Lakoff, G. (1987) Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories reveal about the Mind. Chicago: University Press.
- Lakoff, G., and Johnson, M. (1980) Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University Press.
- Lappin, S. (ed.) (1996) The Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory. Oxford: Blackwell.
- Larson, R., and Segal, G. (1995) Knowledge of Meaning: an Introduction to Semantic Theory. Cambridge, Mass. and London: MIT Press.
- Lehrer, A. (1974) Semantic Fields and Lexical Structure. Amsterdam: North Holland.
- Levin, B., and Pinker, S. (1992) Lexical and Conceptual Semantics. Oxford: Blackwell.
- Levinson, S. (1983) Pragmatics. Cambridge: CUP.
- Levinson, S. (2000) Presumptive Meanings: The Theory of Generalized Conversational Implicature. Cambridge, Mass. and London: MIT Press.
- Lyons, J. (1977) Semantics. 2 vols. Cambridge: CUP.
- Lyons, J. (1995) Linguistic Semantics: an introduction. Cambridge: CUP. Semantics: A New Outline. Cambridge: CUP.
- Pinker, S. (1999) Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson.
- Saeed, J. (1997) Semantics. Oxford: Blackwell.
- Sperber, D. and Wilson, D. (1995) Relevance: communication and cognition, 2nd edition. Oxford: Blackwell.
- Yule, G. (1996) Pragmatics. Oxford: OUP.
Essay titles
- What are the advantages and limitations of describing word meaning in terms of lexical decomposition?
- Why do we need to posit a level of Logical Form?
- Describe and motivate the ‘event’ analysis of verbs and adverbs.
- What do you understand by the term ‘presupposition’?
- Is there a natural distinction between semantic and pragmatic aspects of meaning?
- How can metaphor be accounted for in linguistic theory?
- ‘Pragmatics is primarily concerned with the difference between what a sentence means and what a hearer understands by that sentence in a conversational context.’ Discuss.
- Do people always say what they mean?
- What aspects of language does Speech Act Theory aim to capture?
- Why might a compositional semantics be desirable within a theory of meaning?
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of a truth-functional semantic theory?
- Discuss the semantic behavious of scalar adjectives.
- Describe the problems posed for Semantic Theory by sentences of the following form:
a)Every gardener who had grown a marrow entered it into the competition.
b)If a gardener wins a rosette, s/he displays it somewhere prominent. - On what basis can one draw a distinction between literal and non-literal meaning?
- What does it mean to say that an expression is vague?
- Describe the main features of, and motivation for, Discourse Representation Theory.
- Compare and contrast any TWO approaches to metaphor with which you are familiar.
- What are the broad differences between a Gricean and a Relevance Theoretic account of conversational implicatures?
Last updated 24th January 2005.
