LINGUIST List 13.365

Mon Feb 11 2002

Books: Pragmatics & Discourse

Editor for this issue: Dina Kapetangianni <dinalinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Paul Peranteau, Pragmatics and Discourse: Evidentials and Relevance

John Benjamins Publishing presents a new work in Semantics/Pragmatics:

Evidentials and Relevance
Elly Ifantidou (Athens University of Economics & Business)

This book uses Sperber and Wilson's "Relevance Theory" to show how
evidential expressions can be analysed in a unified semantic/pragmatic
framework. 

The first part surveys general linguistic work on
evidentials, presents speech-act theory and examines Grice's theory of
meaning and communication with emphasis on three main issues: for
linguistically encoded evidentials, are they truth-conditional or
non-truth-conditional, and do they contribute to explicit or implicit
communication? For pragmatically inferred evidentials, is there a
pragmatic framework in which they can be adequately accounted for?

The second part examines those assumptions of Relevance theory that
bear on the study of evidentials, offers an account of pragmatically
inferred evidentials and introduces three distinctions relevant to the
issues discussed in this book: between explicit and implicit
communication, truth-conditional and non-truth conditional meaning,
and conceptual and procedural meaning. These distinctions are applied
to a variety of linguistically encoded evidentials, including sentence
adverbials, parenthetical constructions and hearsay particles. 
This book offers convincing evidence that not all evidentials behave
similarly with respect to the above distinctions and offers an
explanation for why this is so. Contents Ch.1 Introduction:
Evidentials: their nature and functions; Ch.2 Speech-act theory; Ch.3
Grice and communication; Ch.4 Relevance Theory; Ch.5 Sentence
adverbials; Ch.6 Parentheticals; Ch.7 Evidential particles; Ch.8
Conclusions.

Pragmatics & Beyond NS, 86
2001. xii, 225 pp. Hardcover
US & Canada: 1 58811 032 X USD 73.00
Rest of world: 90 272 5105 3 EUR 80.00


John Benjamins Publishing Co.
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Phone: +215 836-1200 +31 20 6304747
Fax: +215 836-1204 +31 20 6739773