Epistemic Meaning

Kasper Boye

ISBN 10: 311020438X / ISBN 13: 9783110204384

Published by De Gruyter Mouton, De Gruyter Mouton Jul 2012, 2012

About this Item

This item is printed on demand - Print on Demand Titel. Neuware -This book is intended to contribute to the clarification of the linguistic research area covered by the terms modal, evidential and epistemic. It sets out to demonstrate that on cross-linguistic grounds a hitherto overlooked epistemic meaning domain must be given due recognition in linguistic theory, on a par with domains such as time and number. The relevant domain is coherent, but at the same time complex in that it consists of two subdomains: one which comprises degree-of-certainty meanings, and one which comprises information-source meanings.The book offers three arguments for giving recognition to such a meaning domain. The first argument concerns the clustering of linguistic expressions with epistemic meaning into morphosyntactically delimited systems of elements. The second argument has to do with the variation pertaining to the coding of epistemic meanings, as highlighted in a semantic map of epistemic expressions. The third argument turns upon the scope properties of epistemic meanings and the morphosyntactic reflections of these properties.Finally, the book proposes a unified cognitive analysis of epistemic meaning in terms of which it attempts to account for the properties of the epistemic meaning domain as well as of individual epistemic meanings.Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Genthiner Strasse 13, 10785 Berlin 392 pp. Englisch.

Seller Inventory # 9783110204384

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Epistemic Meaning
• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton, De Gruyter Mouton Jul 2012
• Publication Date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 311020438X
• ISBN 13: 9783110204384
• Binding: Buch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 236W x 160H x 26D millimeters 236 millimeters width by 160 millimeters height by 26 millimeters depth
• Weight: 736 grams

About this title

Synopsis

This book deals with epistemic expressions: the linguistic means we have for expressing our degree of certainty about and our type of evidence for propositions about the world. It presents a cross-linguistic study of such expressions and demonstrates that they behave in a way that can be described in terms of a coherent but complex meaning domain. In order to account for this behaviour the book proposes to analyse epistemic meaning in terms of a coherent but complex cognitive structure which is bound up with our cognitive capacity for relating our conception of the world to the world.

About the Author

Kasper Boye, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.