Subject: new books in semantics , pragmatics , & philosophy of languages ( 4 titles )

aspect and predication : the semantics of argument structure gillian catriona ramchand , oxford university this book investigates the systematic correspondences between syntactic structure and semantic interpretation in the domain of predicate-argument relationships . taking scottish gaelic as its empirical base , the book provides a detailed working out of a semantic system of argument classification which moves away from lexically-driven thematic roles in the traditional sense and towards a more constrained , syntactically motivated , set of primitives . may 1997 264 pp . 0-19 - 823651 - 4 $ 55 . 00 oxford university press lexical semantics : the problem of polysemy edited by james pustejovsky , brandeis university , and branimir boguraev , natural language program , apple computer inc . , california lexical ambiguity presents one of the most intractable problems for language processing studies and , not surprisingly , it is at the core of research in lexical semantics . originally published as two special issues of the journal of semantics , this collection focuses on the problem of polysemy , from the point of view of practitioners of computational linguistics . january 1997 224 pp . ; 25 linecuts 0-19 - 823662 - x paper $ 29 . 95 oxford university press parts and wholes in semantics friederike moltmann , city college of new york graduate center this book develops a unified account of expressions involving the notions of " part " and " whole " in which principles of the individuation of part structures play a central role . moltmann presents a range of new empirical generalizations with data from english and a variety of other languages involving plurals , mass nouns , adnominal and adverbial modifiers such as as a whole , together , and alone , nominal and adverbial quanitfiers ranging over parts , and expressions of completion such as completely and partly . she develops a new theory of part structures which differs from traditional mereological theories in that the notion of an integrated whole plays a central role and in that the part structure of an entity is allowed to vary across different situations , perspectives , and dimensions . august 1997 272 pp . 0-19 - 509574 - x $ 39 . 95 oxford university press diachronic prototype semantics : a contribution to historical lexicology dirk geeraerts , katholieke universiteit leuven , belgium ( oxford studies in lexicography and lexicology ) prototype theory makes a crucial distinction between central and peripheral sense of words . geeraerts explores the implications of this model for a theory of semantic change , in the first full-scale treatment of the impact of the most recent developments in lexicological theory on the study of meaning change . he identifies structural features of the development of word meanings which follow from a prototype-theoretical model of semantic structure , and incorporates these diachronic prototypicality effects into a theory of meaning change . may 1997 224 pp . ; 20 b / w figures 0-19 - 823652 - 2 $ 65 . 00 oxford university press for more information about linguistics titles from oxford university press : e-mail : linguistics @ oup-usa . org or visit the oxford university press usa web site : http : / / www . oup-usa . org oxford university press usa
