Temporality

Universals and Variation

By: Maria Bittner

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Paperback | 29 April 2014 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback
348 Pages

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24.64 x 17.22 x 1.78

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Representing the culmination of fifteen years of research by the author, Temporality: Universals and Variation surveys the ways in which languages of different types refer to past, present, and future events and how these referents are related to the knowledge and attitudes of those involved in the dialogue.

Four major language types are examined in depth: tense-based English, tense-aspect-based Polish, aspect-based Chinese, and mood-based Kalaallisut. Each contributes to a series of logical representation languages, exemplifying four special cases of a common logical language which, Bittner argues, underlies all language types. The ways in which these four language types differ is in whether they choose to grammaticalize discourse reference to times (tense), events (aspect), and/or attitudes (mood), and how non-grammaticalized elements are inferred.

The common logical language, according to Bittner, is a dynamic update logic, building on DRT and Centering Theory, but with a novel architecture. For example, the distinction between focal versus peripheral attention plays a key role, parallel to focal versus peripheral vision.

This cutting-edge research is valuable for formal semanticists, philosophers of language, logicians, and computer scientists interested in cross-linguistic formal semantics, dynamic semantics, and direct semantic composition in Categorial Grammar.

Industry Reviews

?By combining a genuinely non-partisan perspective on human languages with uncompromising formal rigor, Maria Bittner succeeds in separating what is particular to individual languages from what is truly universal to human language and thought. An unparalleled achievement and a milestone in the history of semantics.?
-Hans Kamp, University of Stuttgart, Germany

?Bittner combines insightful linguistic analysis of four very different languages with the construction of a logic, Update with Centering, tailored to their varied semantic and referential needs, and the definition of a grammar formalism according to which logical forms can be constructed compositionally directly from the surface forms of their sentences in context. Her book is a shining example of linguistics as a cognitive science, and will be read by computer scientists, psychologists, and linguists.?
-Mark Steedman, University of Edinburgh, UK

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