The Universal Semantic Cycle

Unraveling the Development of Quantification in Language
Erscheinungsjahr 2027
ISBN: 978-3-032-46573-3
Verlag: Springer International Publishing

Buch, Englisch, Band 107, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm

Reihe: Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy

This book offers a novel perspective on universal quantification in natural language. It highlights the diachronic pathways that link the puzzlingly diverse ways of expressing universal quantifiers across human languages. Drawing on decades of crosslinguistic research, it reveals the existence of three distinct systems of quantification: plural quantification, alternative quantification, and standard quantification. The author analyses how plurals and interrogative pronouns can be common historical sources for nominal universal quantifiers. The book offers compositional semantic analyses of the crosslinguistic and diachronic observations. It tracks the history of universal quantifiers in English from Old English to Present Day English and shows that all three systems of quantification are involved in their trajectory. It offers the Universal Semantic Cycle (modeled after the famous Jespersen Cycle for negation) as an overarching theory of universal quantification. This book significantly contributes to quantification theory, compositional semantic change, and crosslinguistic semantic variation. The intended audience includes students and researchers in semantics. The empirical and theoretical findings are of interest to linguists working on crosslinguistic variation and diachronic change. The book has repercussions for logic, philosophy, and psychology and is relevant for researchers interested in linking these fields to language.  

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Beck, Sigrid

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Chapter 1: Introducing the Universal Semantic Cycle(USC).- Chapter 2: Semantic Background.- Chapter 3: Crosslinguistic Case Studies of Stages in the USC.- Chapter 4: Diachronic Unfolding of the USC: English.- Chapter 5: Analysis of the Changes in the USC.- Chapter 6: Conclusions and Consequences.

Über Autor(innen)

Sigrid Beck is a semanticist whose particular interest is bringing to bear novel data sources on semantic theory. She has worked on questions, focus, plurals, comparison constructions and decomposition adverbs. Her work involves crosslinguistic comparison, child language acquisition and processing. Formal diachronic semantics has been a recent focus of her research.

Sigrid Beck got her PhD from the Universität Tübingen in 1996 and her Habilitation at the Goethe Universität Frankfurt in 2003. Further stages of her career have been the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, University of Connecticut, Universität Potsdam and MIT. Her current position is at the Universität Tübingen's English Department, where she is engaged in making accessible linguistic theory to a larger audience.