LINGUIST List 11.1573

Tue Jul 18 2000

Books: Pragmatics & Semantics

Editor for this issue: Scott Fults <scottlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Jud Wolfskill, Pragmatics, Semantics: Presumptive Meanings, S. C. Levinson

The following is a book which readers of this list might find of
interest. For more information please visit
http://mitpress.mit.edu/promotions/books/LEVRPF99


Presumptive Meanings

The Theory of Generalized Conversational Implicature

Stephen C. Levinson


When we speak, we mean more than we say. In this book Stephen C.
Levinson explains some general processes that underlie presumptions in
communication. This is the first extended discussion of preferred
interpretation in language understanding, integrating much of the best
research in linguistic pragmatics from the last two decades. Levinson
outlines a theory of presumptive meanings, or preferred
interpretations, governing the use of language, building on the idea
of implicature developed by the philosopher H. P. Grice. Some of the
indirect information carried by speech is presumed by default because
it is carried by general principles, rather than inferred from
specific assumptions about intention and context. Levinson examines
this class of general pragmatic inferences in detail, showing how they
apply to a wide range of linguistic constructions. This approach has
radical consequences for how we think about language and
communication.

	

Stephen C. Levinson is Director of the Max Planck Institute for
Psycholinguistics, the Netherlands.


7 x 9, 450 pp., 1 illus., paper ISBN 0-262-62130-4, cloth ISBN
0-262-12218-9

Language, Speech, and Communication series

A Bradford Book



 Phone: (617) 253-2079
MIT Press Fax: (617) 253-1709
Five Cambridge Center E-mail: wolfskilmit.edu 
Cambridge, MA 02142-1493 http://mitpress.mit.edu