Semantics and non-truth-conditional meaning

This book is concerned with semantics and, particularly, non-truth-conditional meaning. It covers a range of topics in this area and discusses previous approaches to the study of non-truth-conditional meaning, such as Speech Act theory and Gricean conventional implicatures. The study shows that previous approaches to non-truth-conditional meaning fall short of providing an explanatory account of this type of meaning, as they fail to offer a comprehensive and unified theory of linguistic semantics. Moreover, they are shown to be insufficient, and often not even necessary, in explaining linguistic semantics in general and non-truth-conditional meaning in particular. The book explores an alternative approach by integrating new advances in the discipline. It develops a unified and explanatory account of linguistic semantics by considering two key distinctions: one between conceptual and procedural meaning, and the other between explicit and implicit communication. These distinctions interact with different levels of representation available in linguistic communication to enable us to account for the variety of linguistic meaning and forms. The discussion covers a range of linguistic forms, including sentence adverbials and parentheticals, discourse and pragmatic connectives, discourse particles and interjections, and mood indicators (both imperative and interrogative).