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From Utterances to Speech Acts

By Mikhail Kissine

"Kissine offers a new theory of speech acts which is philosophically sophisticated and builds on work in cognitive science, formal semantics, and linguistic typology. This highly readable, brilliant essay is a major contribution to the field."

--François Recanati, Institut Jean-Nicod


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Title: On the Semantics and Logical Form of Wh-Clauses
Written By: Stephen R. Berman
Description:

This dissertation proposes a semantically dichotomous analysis of wh-clauses as denoting either questions or quantified propositions, depending on syntactic context (in certain cases additionally influenced by lexical properties). Behavior under quantificational adverbs provides the primary diagnostic tool and motivates analysing wh-phrases as inherently nonquantified open sentences, following the Heim/Kamp treatment of indefinites. Restrictions on wh-phrase quantifiability, which it is argued interacts with presupposition, motivate the semantic dichotomy. Additionally, the quantified interpretation is argued not to involve inherent exhaustiveness.

Publication Year: 1992
Publisher: Graduate Linguistic Students' Association, Umass
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BibTex: View BibTex record
Linguistic Field(s): Semantics

Versions:
Format: Paperback
ISBN-13: N/A
Pages: 279
Prices: 16.00