Jerrold Sadock
Presumptive Meanings is a careful and cogent reformulation of linguistic pragmatics based on a sweeping knowledge of the existing literature and a profound understanding of the problem of meaning in natural language. This book presents a significant challenge to both ultra-functionalist views and to the reigning structural theories of the relation between meaning and form. By showing how generalized conversational implicature interacts with both syntactic and semantic description, Levinson has produced the first real advance in the Gricean program in a decade.
Endorsement
Presumptive Meanings is a tour de force in the study of language and meaning. It takes us beyond what people say, as they rely on the conventional meanings of words and sentences, into the subtle and complex world of what people mean but do not say. Levinson's account of this world is not only scholarly and articulate, but full of insights. In this book Levinson takes up Paul Grice's notion of 'generalized conversational implicatures,' argues for its importance, and then offers an elegant refinement. Along the way, he presents a scholarly history of Grice's notion, brings a wide range of phenomena to bear on it, and draws out an impressive array of implications of his view. The result is a remarkable achievement—must reading for any serious student of language and meaning.
—
Herbet H. Clark, Department of Psychology, Stanford University
From the Publisher
Presumptive Meanings is a careful and cogent reformulation of linguistic pragmatics based on a sweeping knowledge of the existing literature and a profound understanding of the problem of meaning in natural language. This book presents a significant challenge to both ultra-functionalist views and to the reigning structural theories of the relation between meaning and form. By showing how generalized conversational implicature interacts with both syntactic and semantic description, Levinson has produced the first real advance in the Gricean program in a decade.
—
Jerrold Sadock, Glen A. Lloyd Professor of Linguistics, University of Chicago
Presumptive Meanings is a tour de force in the study of language and meaning. It takes us beyond what people say, as they rely on the conventional meanings of words and sentences, into the subtle and complex world of what people mean but do not say. Levinson's account of this world is not only scholarly and articulate, but full of insights. In this book Levinson takes up Paul Grice's notion of 'generalized conversational implicatures,' argues for its importance, and then offers an elegant refinement. Along the way, he presents a scholarly history of Grice's notion, brings a wide range of phenomena to bear on it, and draws out an impressive array of implications of his view. The result is a remarkable achievement—must reading for any serious student of language and meaning.
—
Herbet H. Clark, Department of Psychology, Stanford University
Herbet H. Clark
Presumptive Meanings is a tour de force in the study of language and meaning. It takes us beyond what people say, as they rely on the conventional meanings of words and sentences, into the subtle and complex world of what people mean but do not say. Levinson's account of this world is not only scholarly and articulate, but full of insights. In this book Levinson takes up Paul Grice's notion of 'generalized conversational implicatures,' argues for its importance, and then offers an elegant refinement. Along the way, he presents a scholarly history of Grice's notion, brings a wide range of phenomena to bear on it, and draws out an impressive array of implications of his view. The result is a remarkable achievement—must reading for any serious student of language and meaning.
