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 who created the 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.
Linguistic entailments are entailments which arise in natural language. If a sentence A entails a sentence B, sentence A cannot be true without B being true as well. For instance, the English sentence "Pat is a fluffy cat" entails the sentence "Pat is a cat" since one cannot be a fluffy cat without being a cat. On the other hand, this sentence does not entail "Pat chases mice" since it is possible for a cat to not chase mice.
Conditional sentences are natural language sentences that express that one thing is contingent on something else, e.g. "If it rains, the picnic will be cancelled." They are so called because the impact of the main clause of the sentence is conditional on the dependent clause. A full conditional thus contains two clauses: a dependent clause called the antecedent, which expresses the condition, and a main clause called the consequent expressing the result.
Natural Language Semantics is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering formal semantics and its interfaces in grammar. Its current editor-in-chief is Amy Rose Deal and it is published by Springer Science+Business Media. It is one of top four journals in formal semantics, alongside Linguistics and Philosophy, the Journal of Semantics, and Semantics and Pragmatics. Work published in the journal has been described as displaying "the same standards of lucidity and originality that mark its [founders] own thinking and writing".
The Journal of Semantics is a leading international peer-reviewed journal of semantics of natural languages published by Oxford University Press. Its current editor is Rick Nouwen of Utrecht University. The journal is available online with subscription via Oxford Journals.
Laurence Robert Horn is an American linguist. He is professor emeritus of linguistics in the department of linguistics at Yale University with specialties in pragmatics and semantics. He received his doctorate in 1972 from UCLA and formerly served as director of undergraduate studies, director of graduate studies, and chair of Yale's department of linguistics. In 2021, he served as president of the Linguistic Society of America.
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.
Linguistics and Philosophy is a peer-reviewed journal which publishes work addressing meaning and structure in natural language. It is one of top four journals in formal semantics, alongside Natural Language Semantics, the Journal of Semantics, and Semantics and Pragmatics. Papers in the journal tend to emphasize concerns shared by linguists and philosophers, and are intended to be accessible to readers from both fields.
Katarzyna Malgorzata "Kasia" Jaszczolt is a Polish and British linguist and philosopher. She is currently Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy of Language at the University of Cambridge, and Professorial Fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge.
Lauri Juhani Karttunen was an adjunct professor in linguistics at Stanford and an ACL Fellow. He died in 2022.
David Ian Beaver is a professor of linguistics and philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, where he also directs the cognitive science program and serves as Graduate Studies Advisor of the Human Dimensions of Organizations Master's program. His work concerns the semantics and pragmatics of natural language, including, in particular, research on presupposition, anaphora, topic and focus.
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.
Lisa Christine Matthewson is Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics at University of British Columbia with specialties in pragmatics and semantics. She has also done significant work with semantic fieldwork and in the preservation and oral history of First Nations languages, especially St'át'imcets and Gitksan. Matthewson's appointment at UBC was notable because she was the first female full professor in the department's history.
Craige Roberts is an American linguist, known for her work on pragmatics and formal semantics.
Free choice is a phenomenon in natural language where a linguistic disjunction appears to receive a logical conjunctive interpretation when it interacts with a modal operator. For example, the following English sentences can be interpreted to mean that the addressee can watch a movie and that they can also play video games, depending on their preference:
- You can watch a movie or play video games.
- You can watch a movie or you can play video games.
Alternative semantics is a framework in formal semantics and logic. In alternative semantics, expressions denote alternative sets, understood as sets of objects of the same semantic type. For instance, while the word "Lena" might denote Lena herself in a classical semantics, it would denote the singleton set containing Lena in alternative semantics. The framework was introduced by Charles Leonard Hamblin in 1973 as a way of extending Montague grammar to provide an analysis for questions. In this framework, a question denotes the set of its possible answers. Thus, if and are propositions, then is the denotation of the question whether or is true. Since the 1970s, it has been extended and adapted to analyze phenomena including focus, scope, disjunction, NPIs, presupposition, and implicature.
In formal semantics conservativity is a proposed linguistic universal which states that any determiner must obey the equivalence . For instance, the English determiner "every" can be seen to be conservative by the equivalence of the following two sentences, schematized in generalized quantifier notation to the right.
- Every aardvark bites.
- Every aardvark is an aardvark that bites.
Elin McCready is an American linguist and professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Aoyama Gakuin University. She researches semantics, pragmatics, and philosophy of language, focusing in particular on such phenomena as evidentials, honorifics, and slurs. She is also co-director of Aoyama Gakuin University's Singularity Research Institute.
