The Composition of Meaning
Author | : Alice G. B. ter Meulen |
Publisher | : John Benjamins Publishing |
Total Pages | : 246 |
Release | : 2004-01-01 |
ISBN-10 | : 9027247692 |
ISBN-13 | : 9789027247698 |
Rating | : 4/5 (92 Downloads) |
Book excerpt: In the modular design of generative theory the syntaxsemantics interface has accounted all along for meanings at the level of Logical Form. The syntaxpragmatics interface, on the other hand, is the result of what one may call the 'pragmatic turn' in the linguistic theory, where content is partitioned into given and new information. In other words, the structural division of the clause has been subjected to criteria of information, or discourse structure. Both interfaces require a structurally descriptive inventory whose specific shapes can be motivated on theory-internal grounds only. The present collection of original articles develops the concept of these interfaces further. The papers in the first section focus on the syntaxsemantics interface, those in the second section on the syntaxpragmatics interface.