Where Semantics Meets Pragmatics

The Current Research in the Semantic / Pragmatics Interface (CRiSPI) series has carved out a new and vibrant area of research. This volume offers the reader a state-of-the-art record of new and established research in this area. Von Heusinger and Turner's careful selection of topics and contributors ensures that each chapter integrates semantic and pragmatic facts into a single theory, that each finds an adequate division of theoretical labour and that each attempts to design and corroborate an elegant account of meaning and use that would be compatible with other aspects of human behaviour. Importantly, each paper in the volume focuses on linguistic detail, not merely abstract discussions of a theoretical nature. Thus each paper makes extensive reference to the semantic and pragmatic facts of English and also other languages. This reference gives each of the proposed analyses a more adequate empirical edge and a sharper theoretical focus.

This book is a must for all scholars and students interested in the new and vibrant discipline of semantics-pragmatics and to anyone who is fascinated by the prospect of working beyond the traditional disciplinary boundaries of linguistics and the philosophy of language.

The chapters in this volume originate from a workshop at the Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute, held at Michigan State University.

"An excellent collection of papers on an important and hotly debated issue. The editors set the stage with a helpful introductory overview (more lively and opinionated than is usual in such introductions), and the papers offer detailed analysis of specific constructions, as well as illumination of general foundational questions about how semantics and pragmatics should be practiced."
Robert Stalnaker, MIT, USA

"The relations between semantics and pragmatics have always been troubled, and are likely to remain so. This volume will not settle the dispute, but it contains scores of new arguments, observations, and ideas that will help to clarify where we stand, and where we might go from here. ??~Where semantics meets pragmatics' is required reading for researchers in both fields, whatever those may be"
Bart Geurts, University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands

For further information on the CRISPI series including sample chapters and details of how to submit a proposal go to: www.elsevier.com/locate/series/crispi