Oxford University Press

This book presents cross-linguistic and cross-cultural investigations of word meaning from different domains of the lexicon - concrete, abstract, physical, sensory, emotional, and social. The words they consider are complex, culturally important, and basic, in a range of languages that includes English, Russian, Polish, French, Warlpiri, and Malay.

Vergil largely avoided artifices of poetic diction, preferring ordinary language, and using words which conventional poets thought too prosaic or colloquial. This book identifies such diction in Vergil and examines the methods by which he turned this into poetry.

It is a near truism of philosophy of language that sentences are prior to words---that they are the only things that fundamentally have meaning. Robert's Stainton's study interrogates this idea, drawing on a wide body of evidence to argue that speakers can and do use mere words, not sentences, to communicate complex thoughts.

It is a near truism of philosophy of language that sentences are prior to words---that they are the only things that fundamentally have meaning. Robert's Stainton's study interrogates this idea, drawing on a wide body of evidence to argue that speakers can and do use mere words, not sentences, to communicate complex thoughts.

The English Civil War was a war of words as well as a military conflict, with supporters of the king and parliament arguing over the meaning of God, liberty, nature, people, law, and other central concepts. Words at War explores these arguments, which continue to shape the political and cultural landscape of the modern world.

A picture of the world as chiefly one of discrete objects, distributed in space and time, has sometimes seemed compelling. It is however one of the main targets of Henry Laycock's book; for it is seriously incomplete. The picture, he argues, leaves no space for 'stuff' like air and water. With discrete objects, we may always ask 'how many?', but with stuff the question has to be 'how much?' Laycock's fascinating exploration also addresses key logical and linguistic questions about the way we categorize the many and the much.

Words, Words, Words is a celebration of what we say and how we say it. It invites us to engage linguistically with who we are: to understand what words tell us about where wecome from and what we do. And as they continually shape our lives, it suggests ways that we can look at words anew and get involved with collecting and coining words ourselves.

Who formed and shaped the English language? David and Hilary Crystal take us on a journey through Britain to discover the people who gave our language its colour and character; Saxon invaders, medieval scholars, poets, reformers, dictionary writers. Part travelogue, part history, this beautifully illustrated book is full of unexpected delights.