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Books in Social sciences and humanities

    • Presupposition

      • 1st Edition
      • January 1, 1979
      • Choon-Kyu Oh + 1 more
      • English
      • Paperback
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      • eBook
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      Syntax and Semantics, Volume 11: Presupposition is a collection of papers presented at a conference held at the University of Kansas in April, 1977. The book contains 16 papers dealing with presupposition, contributed by linguists, philosophers, mathematicians, and computer scientists. The first paper proposes formal criteria for distinguishing among various distinct phenomena indiscriminately called "presupposition" in recent literature. The paper also provides excellent and authoritative background information. A set of papers attempts to differentiate diverse phenomena lumped together under the cover term "presupposition" and to supply some sort of strategy for justifying the classification of each of these phenomena. The text closes with a paper that elucidates context and contextual domain. The parallel he drawn between the two is especially fruitful in that it is able to resolve the problem of discourse reference on independently justified grounds. Linguists and language experts will find the book very interesting.
    • Discourse and Syntax

      • 1st Edition
      • January 1, 1979
      • Talmy Givón
      • English
      • Paperback
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      • eBook
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      Syntax and Semantics, Volume 12: Discourse and Syntax provides information pertinent to the fundamental aspects of the study of the syntax of isolated sentences. This book discusses the relationship between the discourse notion topic and the syntactic notion subject. Organized into five parts encompassing 20 chapters, this volume begins with an overview of the discourse-function definition of so-called movement transformations. This text then presents the argument against the existence of an independent structural level called syntax as far as it can go, suggesting that all syntactic behavior within a given range of data can be predicted from functional considerations. Other chapters consider syntax as a mode of the automatic processing of speech. This book discusses as well the integration of the speaker's goals with communicative strategies in the structure and flow of personal narratives. The final chapter deals with discourse-pragmatic governance of so-called syntactic phenomena. This book is a valuable resource for linguists.