Ten leading scholars provide exacting research results and a reliable and accessible introduction to the new field of optimality theoretic pragmatics. The book includes a general introduction that overviews the foundations of this new research paradigm. The book is intended to satisfy the needs of students and professional researchers interested in pragmatics and optimality theory, and will be of particular interest to those exploring the interfaces of formal pragmatics with grammar, semantics, philosophy of language, information theory and cognitive psychology.

'This collection clearly demonstrates that Optimality Theory finds fruitful applications in the domain of pragmatics. The papers show how to overcome the traditional gap between linguistic meaning and utterance meaning. Conceptions like relevance, conversational implicature, pragmatic anomaly, grammaticalization, recoverability, and constructional iconicity appear in a new light'. - Manfred Krifka, Professor in General Linguistics, Insititute for German Speech and Linguistics, Humboldt University, Germany

'Though the idea of optimization was present in the pragmatic enterprise from the very beginning, we had to wait for this collection in order to see how to integrate pragmatics into Optimality Theory.' - Professor Paul Smolensky, Department of Cognitive Science, Johns Hopkins University

Autorentext

DAVID BEAVER Faculty member at the Linguistics Department, Stanford University and Affiliate of the Symbolic Systems Program, USA HELEN DE HOOP Assistant Professor in General Linguistics, University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands HANS-MARTIN GÄRTNER Assistant Director at ZAS, Berlin PETRA HENDRIKS Assistant Professor at the Departments of Dutch and Artificial Intelligence, University of Groningen, Sweden GERHARD JÄGER Privatdozent, Computational Linguistics Department, Potsdam University HANJUNG LEE Postdoctoral Fellow in the Cognitive Science Program, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA JASON MATTAUSCH Research Assistant, Zentrum für allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin JENNIFER SPENADER Graduate Student, Computational Linguistics, Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University ROBERT VAN ROOY is a KNAW-Fellow working on the project Games, Relevance and Meaning at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Amsterdam RALF VOGEL Research Assistant, Institute of Linguistics, University of Potsdam

Inhalt
Acknowledgements Notes on the Contributors Editors' Introduction: Pragmatics and Optimality Theory; R.Blutner and H.Zeevat On the Interpretation of Stressed Pronouns; H.de Hoop Optimization in Focus Identification; P.Hendriks Optimality Theoretic Pragmatics and Binding Phenomena; J.Mattausch Particles: Pre-supposition Triggers, Context Markers, or Speech Act Markers; H.Zeevat Input-Output Mismatches in Optimality Theory; D.Beaver and H.Lee On the Optimality Theory Status of 'Unambiguous Encoding'; H-M.Gärtner Relevance and Bidirectional Optimality Theory; R.van Rooy Remarks on the Architecture of Optimality Theory Syntax Grammars; R.Vogel Variation in Demonstrative Choice in Swedish; J.Spenader Learning Constraint Subhierarchies: The Bidirectional Gradual Learning Algorithm; G.Jäger References Index