THE USE OF LANGUAGE by Prashant Parikh

[Christine Sosa]

CSLI Publications is pleased to announce the availability of:

THE USE OF LANGUAGE; Prashant Parikh ;paper ISBN: 1-57586-354-5,
$24.50, cloth ISBN: 1-57586-355-3, $65.00, 175 pages. CSLI
Publications 2001. http://cslipublications.stanford.edu , email:
pubs at csli.stanford.edu.

To order this book, contact The University of Chicago Press. Call
their toll free order number 1-800-621-2736  (U.S. & Canada only)  or
order online at http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ (use the search
feature to locate the book, then order).

Book description:

The Use of Language provides the first game-theoretic account of
communication, speaker meaning, and interpretation, and more general
types of information flow. The analysis is then extended to
conversational implicature and to a new explanation of the Gricean
maxims and various important properties of implicature. The book also
develops game-theoretic models of illocutionary force,
miscommunication, and aspects of discourse. Lastly, it offers a new
account of visual representation and visual implicature.


"Dr. Parikh has developed a very original way of considering
communication as expressed in language or visually. He has argued
that many apparently odd features of actual communication can be
explained in rational terms, as minimizing communication length. The
richness of his examples and results is accompanied by a high clarity
of exposition."
--Kenneth J. Arrow
Nobel Memorial Laureate
Dept. of Economics, Stanford University

"Building on the writings of J. L. Austin and Paul Grice, Prashant
Parikh develops an original and insightful systematic account of
communication in a game theoretic framework. These are the right
tools for the articulation and application of Gricean ideas about
speaker meaning and conversational implicature, with their emphasis
on speech as rational action and on the reflective interaction of
speaker and audience, and this book brings out in rich detail how
fruitful the framework can be."
--Robert Stalnaker
Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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