8.478, Books: Phonology, Semantics/Pragmatics

Tue Apr 8 20:14:27 UTC 1997

LINGUIST List:  Vol-8-478. Tue Apr 8 1997. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 8.478, Books: Phonology, Semantics/Pragmatics

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Editor for this issue: Susan Robinson <sue at linguistlist.org>
 ==========================================================================

Additional information on the following books, as well as a short
backlist of the publisher's titles, may be available from the
Listserv.  Instructions for retrieving publishers' backlists appear at
the end of this issue.
 ==========================================================================

PHONOLOGY

Daniel Silverman; Phasing and Recoverability;
0-8153-2876-1, cloth; 256 pages, $56; Garland Publishing; Outstanding
Dissertations in Linguistics

This phonological study investigates the articulatory timing
("phasing") relationships that render acoustic cues optimally
recoverable by the listener, and the strong tendency for languages to
allow sub-optimal timing patterns only if they allow optimal ones. The
primary area of focus is the Otomanguean language group of Oaxaca,
Mexico and neighboring states, which possesses "laryngeally complex"
vowels, a typologically unusual pattern in which tone and non-modal
phonatory settings (breathiness, creakiness)cross-classify. The
laryngeally complex vowels of Jalapa Mazatec, Comaltepec, Chinantec,
and Copala Trique are studied in depth.  Also explored are the phasing
relations between obstruents and laryngeals, and sonorants and
laryngeals, including phonological analyses from such diverse groups
as Mon-Khmer, Tibeto-Burman, and Nilotic, among others. Throughout the
investigation, findings from a number of relevant disciplines
aerodynamics, acoustics, audition are applied to the sound patterns in
an effort not only to describe them in phonetic detail, but also to
explain their phonological and typological behavior.

(Ph.D. dissertation, University of California-Los Angeles, 1995;
revised with new bibliography and index)

E-mail: info at garland.com

 ==========================================================================

SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS

Renate Musan; On the Temporal Interpretation of Noun Phrases;
0-8153-2886-9, cloth; 220 pages, $51; Garland Publishing; Outstanding
Dissertations in Linguistics

The book investigates the temporal interpretation of noun phrases. In
particular, it explores the following questions: (1) Is the temporal
interpretation of a noun phrase determined by the temporal
interpretation of the rest of its clause; and (2) What kind of further
interactions take place between the interpretation of noun phrases and
the temporal interpretation of the main predicate of a clause?

The author argues, in contrast to previous research by En=E7, that the
temporal location of situation times of nouns depends on the temporal
interpretation of the rest of the clause. The book suggests an account
of why noun phrases do sometimes show a remarkable freedom of temporal
interpretation and sometimes do not. The notions of 'temporally
dependent' and 'temporally independent' noun phrases are
introduced. It is shown that the distribution of temporally dependent
and temporally independent noun phrases involves the distinction
between weak (or cardinal) and strong (or resuppositional) noun
phrases as well as the distinction between existence-independent
arguments and other arguments. This distribution is explained as a
consequence of (1) determiner-quantification being analyzed as
quantification over stages of individuals, (2) independently motivated
mechanisms of implicit quantifier restriction, and (3) a particular
account of weak and strong determiners. This account analyzes both
types of determiners as restrictive quantifiers, and attributes
differences between them to whether the noun is mapped at LF into the
restrictive clause or into the nuclear scope of the determiner. The
mechanisms introduced in this chapter are also applied to generic noun
phrases, certain kind-denoting noun phrases, and to the distinction
between object-related readings and event-related readings.  The other
main problem that is addressed is the question of whether, the
temporal location of individuals - as for instance the location of
John in "John was intelligent" is dependent on the tense of the
clause. Apparent location effects of tenses on individuals are
explained as an effect of life-time presuppositions that are
introduced by the lexical semantics of stage-level predicates and
individual-level predicates, but not by a third type of predicate,
existence-independent predicates. Life-time effects associated with
individual-level predicates are captured as a pragmatic phenomenon in
terms of Grice's Maxim of Informativity and related implicatures. In
temporally specific contexts, life-time effects are neutralized. This
is related to certain effects that topic-focus structure has on
temporal interpretation.

Furthermore, the book investigates interactions of noun phrase
interpretation with temporal noun modifiers and draws some tentative
new connections between the temporal interpretation of noun phrases
and their modal interpretation.

(Ph.D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1995;
revised  with new preface, bibliography, and index)

E-mail: info at garland.com

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-----------------------Publisher's backlists-----------------------

The following contributing LINGUIST publishers have made their
backlists available on the World Wide Web:

Blackwells:
	http://linguistlist.org/pubs/blackwell.html
Cascadilla Press:
	http://www.cascadilla.com/
Cornell University Linguistics Dept:
	http://linguistlist.org/pubs/cornell.html
John Benjamins:
	gopher://Benjamins.titlenet.com:6400
Kluwer Academic Publishers:
	http://kapis.www.wkap.nl/kapis/CGI-BIN/WORLD/hierarchy.htm?H+0+
	0+0+NOTHING+COMBINED
Lawrence Erlbaum:
	http://www.erlbaum.com/inform.htm
MIT Working papers in Linguistics:
	http://broca.mit.edu/mitwpl.web/WPLs.html
U. of Massachusetts Graduate Linguistics Association:
	http://linguistlist.org/pubs/glsa.html
Pacific Linguistics Publications:
	http://linguistlist.org/pubs/pacific.html
Summer Institute of Linguistics:
	http://www.sil.org/acpub/catalog/catalog.html

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LINGUIST List: Vol-8-478