The first of its kind, this textbook provides a comprehensive introduction to the study of semantics and pragmatics from an interactionist perspective, grounded entirely on empirical methods of social/behavioural science. Designed for advanced undergraduate students, beginning graduate students, and practicing researchers, it responds to the growing requirement that rather than relying on their own native speaker intuitions, students gather and analyze semantic data in a broad range of research contexts, from fieldwork to psycholinguistic and child language research. Practical in its approach, it provides the tools that the advanced student needs in order to 'do' this semantic research, in both field and laboratory contexts. This is facilitated by an innovative view of meaning that combines reference and mental representations as aspects of communicative interaction. It is accompanied by a glossary of terms and a range of exercises for students, along with model answers to the exercises for instructors.
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The first introduction to the study of semantics and pragmatics as empirical science, based on an interactionist approach to meaning.
Foreword; List of figures; List of tables; Abbreviations in interlinear
glosses; Part I. Basics of Semantic Theory:
1. Meaning and its study;
2.
Meaning and the properties of language;
3. Semantic theories, metalanguages,
and ontologies; Part II. The Practice of Semantic Research:
4. Semantic
phenomena;
5. Gathering semantic data;
6. Semantic analysis; Part III.
Domains of Semantic Research:
7. Semantic typology;
8. Reference to
individuals;
9. Space;
10. Temporal semantics; References; Index.
Juergen Bohnemeyer is Professor of Linguistics at the University at Buffalo. He has conducted extensive research on the semantic typology of representations of space, time, events, and causality, and he founded the Semantic Typology Lab at the University at Buffalo.
