By identifying some of the pitfalls into which many seem to stumble, P&NLU will help ensure that neophyte pragmaticians won't repeat these common mistakes.
It is unfortunate that such views persist, but persist they do.
I share G's impatience with linguists-especially those working in discourse -who continue to claim, for example, that Grice's maxims are nonuniversal and even culture-specific, or that NPs refer to other NPs, or that a given sentence implicates this or that. In addition, G clears up several misconceptions and misunderstandings that have plagued the field for a number of years. In 180 pages, G manages to lay out in a very clear and concise manner the basic principles of modern pragmatics, including what are now generally taken to be six central topics of the field: reference, including anaphora, deixis, and (in)definiteness implicature presupposition speech acts conversational structure and functions of syntax.
I am pleased, but not surprised, to report that G's book provides an excellent solution to this 'Levinson problem'. I had for some time felt the need for an alternative to Levinson's Pragmatics (1983), long the standard text in this area in a nine-week quarter, undergraduates in an introductory course generally cannot assimilate Levinson's dense coverage of the field. Ward, Northwestern University When Georgia Green's textbook Pragmatics and natural language understanding (hereafter P&NLU) first came out in 1989, I immediately ordered it for my undergraduate Pragmatics course. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1989. REVIEWS345 Pragmatics and natural language understanding. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
0 kommentar(er)
