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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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Book Information

   

Title: Structure in Language
Subtitle: A Dynamic Perspective
Written By: Thomas Berg
URL: http://routledge.com/9780415991353
Series Title: Routledge Studies in Linguistics
Description:

This book examines one of the allegedly unique features of human language: structure sensitivity. Its point of departure is the distinction between content and structural units, which are defined in psycholinguistic terms. The focus of the book is on structural representations, in particular their hierarchicalness and their branching direction. Structural representations reach variable levels of activation and are therefore gradient in nature. Their variable strength is claimed to account for numerous effects including differences between individual analytical levels, differences between languages as well as pathways of language acquisition and breakdown. English is found to be consistent in its branching direction and to have evolved its branching direction in line with the cross-level harmony constraint. Structure sensitivity is argued to be highly variable both within and across languages and consequently an unlikely candidate for a defining property of human language.

Publication Year: 2008
Publisher: Routledge (Taylor and Francis)
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BibTex: View BibTex record
Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics

Versions:
Format: Hardback
ISBN: 0415991358
ISBN-13: 9780415991353
Pages: 396
Prices: U.K. £ 70.00
U.S. $ 135.00