This book explores the semantic and pragmatic mechanisms underlying grammaticalization. Regine Eckardt argues that language change frequently involves a structural reorganization at the phonological, morphological, and syntactic levels. Speakers not only master the structural aspect of such reanalyses, they also-as the author argues-keep a detailed mental record of what has happened to meaning. The author develops semantic reanalysis as the semantic correlate and tracks its effects in meaning change. Several case studies offer new insights in the architecture of conceptual thinking (...) that is part of the human language faculty. Professor Eckardt develops her approach in terms of formal semantic theory. She shows how neatly tailored analyses in truth-conditional compositional semantics can elucidate the structural mechanisms of meaning change. Her exposition is advanced in the context of several in-depth case studies containing data new to historical linguistics. This book will be of central interest to scholars and advanced students of historical and comparative linguistics and of formal semantics in departments of linguistics and philosophy. (shrink)

The aim of Schunn, Crowley and Okada's (1998) study is to address the question of whether the current state of cognitive science, as represented by Cognitive Science and the Cognitive Science Society, “reflects the multidisciplinary ideals of its foundation.” To properly interpret and respond to their results, we need to ask a prior question: What is cognitive science's multidisciplinary ideal? There are at least two conceptions—a “localist” conception, which seems to be implicit in Schunn, Crowley and Okada's discussion, and a (...) “holist” conception. I argue that while both have been endorsed by some cognitive scientists, there are reasons for preferring the holist conception. I then consider what Schunn, Crowley and Okada's findings tell us about the state of cognitive science in light of a holist approach and report on an analysis of the journal's contents which looks at the domain, subdomain, and cognitive capacity investigated. (shrink)

This paper investigates the meaning of German selbst (≈ E N-self) in its intensifying use, and the relation of this selbst to the focus particle selbst (≈ E even). I propose that intensifying selbst denotes type-lifted variants of the identity function on the domain of individuals, and that the observed stress accents must be analysed in terms of by now well-established focus theories. This analysis covers the core range of data correctly, predicting obligatory stress on selbst, sortal restrictions, centrality effects, (...) and the distribution of examples that express some kind of surprise. Moreover, it allows for a treatment of the reanalysis of intensifying selbst into focus particle selbst that stipulates fewer historical accidents than previous accounts. (shrink)

Background: Education can be taken as a key factor in transmission of a value tradition in healthcare. In professional and educational contexts, transmission of values appears to be a kind of guarantee for an occupational group’s professional identity, awareness and ethical integrity. Given the positives of such transmission of value traditions, one can also pay attention to conflicts between the professional tradition and individuals who are brought into that tradition. Objectives: How does mediation of value tradition in healthcare education appear (...) out of the students’ perspective based on their own narratives? Research design and participants: Students’ texts were analysed through a combination of contrastive discourse analysis and sociohistorical description and then evaluated from an ethical perspective. Data were collected from the annual electronic feedback given by students after their clinical practice at a University Hospital. Ethical considerations: Organizational approval was received. Information about the voluntary nature of participation was a part of the feedback tool. Findings: The analysis points to the fact that there is a definite theme in the students’ experiences that both the previous research has neglected and that stands in conflict with the current tradition of healthcare education in Finland. That theme can be summarized in the experience of ‘losing one’s identity’, and it is expressed in a request to experience of ‘losing one’s identity’ and it is expressed in a request to have a right to ‘use one’s own name’ also as a healthcare professional. Discussion and conclusion: Being addressed by one’s name is to make the person directly involved and responsible, realizing that that person’s perspective is of importance to the way the world is. We argue that this theme (my name) is of ethical importance and could have empowering potentiality when used in an ethically sound way. (shrink)

Die um 1800 aufgeworfenen anthropologisch-psychologischen Fragestellungen sind Gegenstand dieses Buches. Sie bildeten einen wichtigen Bestandteil der damaligen Wissenschaftskultur und wurden unter Namen wie "Empirische Psychologie", "Erfahrungsseelenkunde", "Experimentalseelenlehre" oder auch "Seelenphysik" abgehandelt. Das Spannungsverhältnis zwischen einem empirisch-erfahrungswissenschaftlichen und einem apriorisch-fundamentalphilosophischen Zugang zur Anthropologie bzw. Psychologie, wie es sich besonders im Ereignisraum Weimar-Jena verdichtete, steht im Mittelpunkt der Betrachtung. Das Buch vermittelt ein differenziertes Bild des anthropologisch-psychologischen Diskurses in jener Phase der Kultur- und Wissenschaftsentwicklung, in der sich Aufklärung, Klassizismus, Klassik, Idealismus und (...) Romantik überlagerten. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung: Städte zeichnen sich durch das Zusammenspiel von gebauter und sozialer Welt aus. In der Stadtforschung wird durch die Rezeption der Actor-Network- Theorie seit einigen Jahren versucht, diese Erkenntnis zur Erweiterung der Handlungsperspektiven für die Stadtplanung zu nutzen. Dabei soll mit dem Rückgriff auf den Begriff der Assemblage der offensichtliche Gegensatz zwischen Materialität und Gesellschaft überwunden werden. In diesem Beitrag soll anhand von vier internationalen Studien aus der angewandten Stadtplanungsliteratur diskutiert werden, inwieweit sich durch die Urban-Assemblage-Forschung neue Perspektiven für die (...) Stadtplanung gewinnen lassen. Anhand von vier thematischen Handlungsfeldern soll aufgezeigt werden, in welcher Weise ANT rezipiert wird und ob sich tatsächlich neue Perspektiven für die Stadtplanung ergeben können. Im Ergebnis wird aufgezeigt, dass es in der Tat durch eine veränderte Sicht auf Stadtplanung, die Beziehungen zwischen der sozialen und nichtmenschlichen Stadt integriert, in diesen Studien gelingt, neue Optionen für eine demokratisierende Stadtpolitik anzudeuten. Allerdings wird zugleich deutlich, dass diese empirischen Studien auch auf Defizite des Urban-Assemblage-Ansatzes hinweisen und insbesondere die Berücksichtigung der politischen und materiellen Dimension des Städtischen noch weiter verbessert werden muss. (shrink)

A logic for generic sentences -- A dynamic causal theory of references.

Disjoint imperative sentences like ( Nimm die ) Hände hoch, oder ich schiesse! , literally ( take your ) hands up, or I’ll shoot! intuitively present the addressee with all her alternatives for action. The speaker informs that all future worlds, as far as the speaker can forsee, are such that the addressee raises her hands or gets killed. I propose a semantic/pragmatic analysis for sentences in the imperative mood that adopts this exhausitve description of future alternatives as a semantic (...) backbone. Different contextual instantiations of alternatives capture a wide range of uses of sentences in imperative mood, as well as coordinations of imperative and declarative sentences, in a uniform way. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2014 Heft: 202 Seiten: 241-257.

The collection focuses on meaning change as a topic of interdisciplinary research.

Several authors propose that performative speech acts are self-guaranteeing due to their self-referential nature (Searle 1989; Jary 2007). The present paper offers an analysis of self-referentiality in terms of truth conditional semantics, making use of Davidsonian events. I propose that hereby can denote the ongoing act of information transfer (more mundanely, the utterance) which thereby enters the meaning of the sentence. The analysis will be extended to cover self-referential sentences without the adverb hereby. While self-referentiality can be integrated in ordinary (...) truth conditional semantic analysis without being a mystery, the resulting account shows that self-referentiality in this sense is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for performative utterances. I propose that the second ingredient of performative utterances consists in an act of the speaker defining her utterance to be an act of the respective kind. The final theory can successfully predict the performativity, or lack thereof, of a wide range of performative sentences, and leads to an explicated interface between compositional sentence meaning and speech act. (shrink)