LINGUIST List 15.2112

Wed Jul 21 2004

Books: Semantics: Prandi

Editor for this issue: Neil Salmond <neillinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. paul, The Building Blocks of Meaning: Prandi

Title: The Building Blocks of Meaning
Subtitle: Ideas for a philosophical grammar
Series Title: Human Cognitive Processing 13 

Publication Year: 2004
Publisher:	John Benjamins
		http://www.benjamins.com/
		http://www.benjamins.nl/ 

Book URL: http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi?bookid=HCP%2013

Author: Michele Prandi, Bologna, Italy 

Hardback: ISBN: 1588115267, Pages: xviii, 521 pp., Price: U.S. $ 162.00 

			
Abstract:

The shaping of complex meanings depends on punctual and relational
coding and inferencing. Coding is viewed as a vector which can run
either from expression to content or from concepts to (linguistic)
forms to mark independent conceptual relations. While coding relies on
systematic resources internal to language, inferencing essentially
depends on a layered system of autonomous shared conceptual
structures, which include both cognitive models and consistency
criteria grounded in a natural ontology. Inference guided by coding is
not a residual pragmatic device but it is a direct way to long-term
conceptual structures that guide the connection of meanings.

The interaction of linguistic forms and concepts is particularly clear
in conceptual conflict where conflictual complex meanings provide
insights in the roots of significance and the linguistic structure of
metaphors.

Complementing a formal analysis of linguistic structures with a
substantive analysis of conceptual structures, a philosophical grammar
provides insights from both formal and functional approaches toward a
more profound understanding of how language works in constructing and
communicating complex meanings.

This monograph is ideally addressed to linguists, philosophers and
psychologists interested in language as symbolic form and as an
instrument of human action rooted in a complex conceptual and
cognitive landscape.


Table of contents

Acknowledgments vii
Foreword: The Idea of Philosophical Grammar ix

I. The Semiotic Background: Coding and Inferencing in the Ideation of
Complex Meanings 1
Introduction
1. Meanings and Messages 5
2. The Ideation of Complex Meanings: The Object of Philosophical
Grammar 33
3. At the Roots of Complex Meanings: The Object of Philosophical
Grammar 55

II. The Conceptual Factors of Significance: Consistency Criteria,
Lexical Structures Cognitive Models and Data 99
Introduction
4. Consistency Criteria within Philosophic and Linguistic Reflexion
103
5. The Formal Frame of Natural Ontology 119
6. Lexical Structures and Lexical Information 151
7. Lexical Structures, Lexical Information and Consistency Criteria
203
8. Consistency Criteria as Presuppositions of Natural Attitude 225

III. The Ideation of Complex Meanings: Simple Sentence, Interclausal
Links, Conflictual Complex Meanings 245
Introduction
9. The Ideation of the Simple Process 249
10. The Ideation of Interclausal Links 281
11. Conflictual Complex Meanings: a Philosophical Grammar of Tropes
345
12. Concluding Remarks 405

Notes 421
References 483
Index 513 


Lingfield(s):	Cognitive Science
		Semantics
		Semiotics
		
Written In:	English (Language Code: ENG) 


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 http://linguistlist.org/get-book.html?BookID=10931.