Events
Survey Seminar Series Spring 2009
The Survey of English Usage organises a number of seminars each
year for staff and students from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities
and beyond. They are generously sponsored by the English Department.
The following research seminars will take place during the Spring
term (in Foster Court Room 233 at 4pm).
Wed 10
February
4pm |
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Dr Billy Clark (Middlesex) |
Concepts and procedures: combining and composing
meanings in utterance interpretation
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Within relevance theory, a distinction has been
made between conceptual and procedural meaning (including
by Blakemore 1987, 2002; Sperber and Wilson 1986; Wilson
and Sperber 1993). Expressions with conceptual meanings
lead interpreters to access elements of conceptual representations.
Expressions with procedural meanings guide the processes
of constructing and manipulating conceptual representations.
A number of questions about this distinction continue
to be discussed. This talk explores two of them:
- How do the various kinds of meaning interact
in the interpretation of specific utterances?
- Can procedural meanings ever be seen as
compositional?
The data come mainly from English and include examples
such as:
- You've got an idea
- Have you got an idea?
As well as the encoded meanings of lexical items and
declarative or non-declarative syntax, it considers
the effects of prosody and procedural expressions such
as wow, so and then.
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Wed 17
March 4pm |
Dr Louise Sylvester (Westminster) |
The Lexis of Medieval Cloth and Clothing:
projects and research questions
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All welcome! Drinks afterwards.
Past events
This page last modified
14 May, 2020
by Survey Web Administrator.