The following outline is provided as an overview and topical guide to linguistics:
In linguistics and related fields,pragmatics is the study of how context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions,as well as the relationship between the interpreter and the interpreted. Linguists who specialize in pragmatics are called pragmaticians. The field has been represented since 1986 by the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA).
Herbert Paul Grice,usually publishing under the name H. P. Grice,H. Paul Grice,or Paul Grice,was a British philosopher of language. He is best known for his theory of implicature and the cooperative principle,which became foundational concepts in the linguistic field of pragmatics. His work on meaning has also influenced the philosophical study of semantics.
In pragmatics,a subdiscipline of linguistics,an implicature is something the speaker suggests or implies with an utterance,even though it is not literally expressed. Implicatures can aid in communicating more efficiently than by explicitly saying everything we want to communicate. The philosopher H. P. Grice coined the term in 1975. Grice distinguished conversational implicatures,which arise because speakers are expected to respect general rules of conversation,and conventional ones,which are tied to certain words such as "but" or "therefore". Take for example the following exchange:
Truth-conditional semantics is an approach to semantics of natural language that sees meaning as being the same as,or reducible to,their truth conditions. This approach to semantics is principally associated with Donald Davidson,and attempts to carry out for the semantics of natural language what Tarski's semantic theory of truth achieves for the semantics of logic.
Relevance theory is a framework for understanding the interpretation of utterances. It was first proposed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson,and is used within cognitive linguistics and pragmatics. The theory was originally inspired by the work of Paul Grice and developed out of his ideas,but has since become a pragmatic framework in its own right. The seminal book,Relevance,was first published in 1986 and revised in 1995.
Stephen Roy Albert Neale is a British philosopher and specialist in the philosophy of language who has written extensively about meaning,information,interpretation,and communication,and more generally about issues at the intersection of philosophy and linguistics. Neale is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Linguistics and holder of the John H. Kornblith Family Chair in the Philosophy of Science and Values at the Graduate Center,City University of New York (CUNY).
In semantics,semiotics,philosophy of language,metaphysics,and metasemantics,meaning "is a relationship between two sorts of things:signs and the kinds of things they intend,express,or signify".
Dan Sperber is a French social and cognitive scientist and philosopher. His most influential work has been in the fields of cognitive anthropology,linguistic pragmatics,psychology of reasoning,and philosophy of the social sciences. He has developed:an approach to cultural evolution known as the epidemiology of representations or cultural attraction theory as part of a naturalistic reconceptualization of the social;relevance theory;the argumentative theory of reasoning. Sperber formerly Directeur de Recherche at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique is Professor in the Departments of Cognitive Science and of Philosophy at the Central European University in Budapest.
In analytic philosophy,philosophy of language investigates the nature of language and the relations between language,language users,and the world. Investigations may include inquiry into the nature of meaning,intentionality,reference,the constitution of sentences,concepts,learning,and thought.
Neilson Voyne Smith FBA,known as Neil Smith,is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at University College London.
In pragmatics,scalar implicature,or quantity implicature,is an implicature that attributes an implicit meaning beyond the explicit or literal meaning of an utterance,and which suggests that the utterer had a reason for not using a more informative or stronger term on the same scale. The choice of the weaker characterization suggests that,as far as the speaker knows,none of the stronger characterizations in the scale holds. This is commonly seen in the use of 'some' to suggest the meaning 'not all',even though 'some' is logically consistent with 'all'. If Bill says 'I have some of my money in cash',this utterance suggests to a hearer that Bill does not have all his money in cash.
Explicature is a technical term in pragmatics,the branch of linguistics that concerns the meaning given to an utterance by its context. The explicatures of a sentence are what is explicitly said,often supplemented with contextual information. They contrast with implicatures,the information that the speaker conveys without actually stating it.
This is an index of Wikipedia articles in philosophy of language
Experimental pragmatics is an academic area that uses experiments to test theories about the way people understand utterances—and,by extension,one another—in context.
Barbara Kenyon Abbott is an American linguist. She earned her PhD in linguistics in 1976 at the University of California at Berkeley under the supervision of George Lakoff. From 1976 to 2006,she was a professor in the department of linguistics and Germanic,Slavic,Asian,and African languages at Michigan State University,with a joint appointment in philosophy. She is now a Professor Emerita.
Robyn Anne Carston,is a linguist and academic,who specialises in pragmatics,semantics,and the philosophy of language. Since 2005,she has been Professor of Linguistics at University College London.
Craige Roberts is an American linguist,known for her work on pragmatics and formal semantics.
Noel Burton-Roberts is a British linguist and Emeritus Professor of English Language and Linguistics at Newcastle University. He is known for work ranging over general and English linguistics:architecture of language,semantics,pragmatics,philosophy of language,and English grammar.
