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This book is a collection of linguistic and philosophical papers dealing with the semantic problems of determiners. The language under investigation is mostly English, although a few papers deal with French and German, and, to a lesser extent, with Dutch, Polish, Russian and Hebrew. The majority of the contributions focus on the semantics of the definite and indefinite articles, leading into discussions of anaphoricness, specificness, opacity and transparency, referentiality and attributiveness and genericness. The relation of the determiners to other parts of grammar, in particular relativisation and predication, is also investigated. Some attention is also given to quantifiers.

In this volume, the author reviews the results of research on language performance and proposes a model of production and comprehension. Although recent developments in linguistics are taken into account, consideration of other requirements of a performance model leads to the conclusion that the grammar the speaker has in mind differs from the grammar as currently conceived of by most linguists. The author is also critical of recent computer simulations of language performance on the basis that they fall short of describing what goes on in human production and comprehension. The author therefore proposes that the basic issues must be rethought and new theoretical foundations reformulated, in order to arrive at a viable theory of language functioning. In developing the framework of the model presented in this book, requirements of flexibility in the performance mechanisms, the probabilistic nature of comprehension processes, and the interleaving of linguistic rules with context and knowledge of the world are emphasized.

Natural language understanding is central to the goals of artificial intelligence. Any truly intelligent machine must be capable of carrying on a conversation: dialogue, particularly clarification dialogue, is essential if we are to avoid disasters caused by the misunderstanding of the intelligent interactive systems of the future. This book is an interim report on the grand enterprise of devising a machine that can use natural language as fluently as a human. What has really been achieved since this goal was first formulated in Turing¿s famous test? What obstacles still need to be overcome?

This book clarifies and exemplifies how pragmatic considerations are relevant to any study of style and stylistics, in the conviction that pragmastylistics is more interesting and useful than stylistics on its own. There are two separate levels of study: one, a general, methodical and scientific discipline; the other, an application of its methods or postulates to the analysis of the `style¿ of a specific utterance, text, speaker, writer, movement or period. It is clear that, in order to approach either, we must first attempt to understand style.

There are fewer distinctions in any language than there are distinct things in the universe. If, therefore, languages are ways of representing the universe, a primary function of their elements must be to allow the much more varied kinds of elements out of which the universe is made to be categorized in specific ways. A prototype approach to linguistic categories is a particular way of answering the question of how this categorization operates. It involves two claims. First, that linguistic categorization exploits principles that are not specific to language but characterize most, if not all, processes of cognition. Secondly, that a basic principle by which cognitive and linguistic categories are organized is the prototype principle, which assigns elements to a category not because they exemplify properties that are absolutely required of each one of its members, but because they exhibit, in varying degrees, certain types of similarity with a particular category member which has been established as the best example (or: prototype) of its kind.

For Roy Harris, the fundamental problem about linguistics is that it has been led astray by the fact that we are capable intellectually of `decontextualising¿ our own verbal behaviour. A whole interlocking system of doctrines about forms, meanings and communication has arisen designed to support the idea that one particular kind of decontextualising analysis is a prerequisite for, rather than a retrospective reflection on, that behaviour. Against this, in 13 essays collected here for the first time, Harris argues for a fresh start, which recognises that we create language `as we gö, both as individuals and as communities, just as we create our social structures, forms of artistic expression, moral values, and everything else we call civilisation. If Harris¿s thought can be put in a nutshell, it is that all utterances (whether written or spoken) have to appear in a context, and that context is an integral part of the utterance. There is no such thing as a contextless utterance.

A process of linguistic redefinition is underway, and it is the aim of this volume to contribute to that process, explain why a redefinition is needed, and how it should proceed. In the case of linguistics the subject is also the subject matter. Many linguists have ignored the problem of definition, simply regarding linguistics as the `science of language itself¿. What, though, is `language itself¿? Is it a language, ie English, Swahili? Or, language in a more general sense? The primary goal of a redefinition of linguistics should be to demonstrate that language is not an objective matter. Linguistics is, and should be, the study of whatever is linguistically pertinent.

Is the study of language ideologically neutral? If so, is this study objective and autonomous? One of the most cherished assumptions of modern academic linguistics is that the study of language is, or should be, ideologically neutral. This professed ideological neutrality goes hand-in-hand with claims of scientific objectivity and explanatory autonomy. Ideologies of Language counters these claims and assumptions by demonstrating not only their descriptive inaccuracy but also their conceptual incoherence.

The essays in this volume, by contributors to the linguistic atlases and other dialectologists, describe some of the problems that bedevil the study of dialect and the methodological solutions employed to minimise them. They also survey the contributions that linguistic cartography can make to the study of English and of language in general. The considerations it embodies are of major importance for the student of language and, in addition, the book is an invaluable companion to the Atlases.