Patrick Griffiths was a professor of English at Beppu University, Japan. He taught courses on semantics, the structure of English, psycholinguistics and general linguistics at a number of universities, including Beppu, the University of the South Pacific, and in the UK at York University and York St John.
Chris Cummins is Reader in Linguistics and English Language at the University of Edinburgh. His other works include Pragmatics (EUP, 2019) and Constraints on Numerical Expressions (2015), and he co-edited the Oxford Handbook of Experimental Semantics and Pragmatics (2019) with Napoleon Katsos.
An easy-to-read and wide-ranging overview of the major research topics in English semantics and pragmatics... An Introduction to English Semantics and Pragmatics makes a significant and novel contribution to the field for two major reasons. First, the exercises at the end of each chapter and the suggested answers at the end of the book make the book a convenient material for practice sessions and student supervisions. Second, unlike, for instance, Cruse's (2011) textbook, it contains several chapters devoted to pragmatics, which is more than welcome as there are already many textbooks on the market that are exclusively devoted to semantics... Another strength of AIESP is that it is entirely in line with the times. First, several recent references have been added to the original edition by Chris Cummins, in particular in Chapters 4 and 9 concerning adjectival meaning and metaphorical meaning. Second, it is not only based on classic theories such as speech act theory, but it also introduces more recent approaches such as Sperber & Wilson's (1995) relevance theory... Summing up, AIESP is a highly valuable book for anyone interested in the study of English semantics and pragmatics. As a thought-provoking textbook, it will be particularly useful to graduate students working on these topics.--Nicolas Ruytenbeek, Université libre de Bruxelles "The Linguist List"
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