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Dr Nicholas Riemer

BA PhD. Sydney
Senior Lecturer

+61 2 9036 7039

Research areas

  • history and philosophy of linguistics
  • Modern English language, especially verb semantics
  • meaning in language (semantic description and theory; polysemy; semantic change)
  • semiotic theory (the foundations of semiotics; semiotics and grammar)
  • metaphor
  • language and subjectivity, especially the place of emotion in theories of language

Joint Affiliation

Selected publications

Books

  • in preparation (editor) The Routledge handbook of semantics. Forthcoming 2014.
  • 2010 Introducing Semantics. Cambridge: CUP. Publisher’s description
  • 2005 The semantics of polysemy. Reading meaning in English and Warlpiri. Berlin/New York: Mouton. Errata

Articles and chapters

  • 2013: Conceptualist semantics: explanatory power, scope and uniqueness. Language Sciences 35: 1-19. doi 10.1016/j.langsci.2012.09.003. Preprint Preprint
  • forthcoming a : Comment: interjections and expressivity. Emotion Review.
  • forthcoming b: Word meaning. In John R. Taylor (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of the Word. Forthcoming 2013. Preprint (draft)
  • forthcoming c: Internalist semantics: meaning, conceptualization and expression. In Nick Riemer (ed.) The Routledge handbook of semantics. Forthcoming 2014.
  • forthcoming d: Lexical decomposition. In Nick Riemer (ed.) The Routledge handbook of semantics. Forthcoming 2014.
  • forthcoming e: Semantics: a theory in search of an object. In Nick Riemer (ed.) The Routledge handbook of semantics. Forthcoming 2014.
  • 2011 La conception syntaxique de la polysémie: une critique, CogniTextes 6.
  • 2010 Sense individuation and syntactic optionality. In Brett Baker (ed) Indigenous Language and Social Identity: papers in honour of Michael Walsh. Pacific Linguistics, Canberra
  • 2009 (a) Grammaticality as evidence and as prediction in a Galilean linguistics.
    Language Sciences 31: 612-633. Preprint
  • 2009 (b) On not having read Itkonen: empiricism and intuitions in the generative data debate. Language Sciences 31: 649-662. Preprint
  • 2006 Reductive paraphrase and meaning: a critique of Wierzbickian semantics.
    Linguistics and Philosophy 29: 347–379. Preprint
  • 2003 (a). Meaning change in verbs: the case of strike. In Blake, Barry and Kate Burridge (eds) Historical Linguistics 2001: Selected papers from the 15th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Melbourne 13-17 August 2001. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • 2003 (b). Les Nominaux dans les complexes verbaux du warlpiri [Nominals in Warlpiri verb complexes]. Actances 12 (working papers of GDR 749, ‘Relations intercatégorielles: les variations aspecto-temporelles et les structures diathétiques’, CNRS, France), 55-72. Preprint
  • 2003 (c). Servant of two masters? NSM and semantic explanation. Theoretical Linguistics 29: 283-294. Preprint
  • 2003 (d). Syntactic evidence and the mental representation of polysemy. In Slezak, P. (ed) Proceedings of the Joint International Conference on Cognitive Science. Sydney: University of New South Wales, 2003.
  • 2002 (a). Interpreting semantic extension: metaphor and metonymy on different levels of lexical categorization. In Cynthia Allen (ed.) Proceedings of the 2001 meeting of the Australian Linguistic Society.
  • 2002 (b). Verb polysemy and the vocabulary of percussion and impact in Central Australia. The Australian Journal of Linguistics 22:1 45-96.
  • 2002 (c). When is a metonymy no longer a metonymy? In Dirven, René and Ralf Pörings (eds) Metaphor and Metonymy in Comparison and Contrast. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • 2001 (a). Interpreting Semantic Extension: Metaphor and Metonymy on Different Levels of Lexical Categorization. In Cynthia Allen (ed), Proceedings of the 2001 conference of the Australian Linguistic Society. Full text
  • 2001 (b). Remetonymizing metaphor: Hypercategories in semantic extension. Cognitive Linguistics 12-4 379-401.
  • 1998. The Grammaticalization of Impact: bang and slap in English. The Australian Journal of Linguistics 18:2 1998. Preprint

Selected Talks

  • 2012a: La linguistique formelle en quête d'un objet : esquisse d'une épistémologie de la 'grammaticalité', Séminaire d'Histoire et d'Epistémologie des sciences du langage, Laboratoire d’histoire des théories linguistiques, Université Paris Diderot.
  • 2012b: Two effects of context on semantic representation. ‘Calcul du sens en contexte’ workshop, Ecole Normale Supérieure [video].
  • 2012c: Données en syntaxe formelle : « grammaticalité », « acceptabilité » et idéalisation. HTL summer school ‘Expérience, Empiricité, Expérimentation en Linguistique : Histoire et Épistémologie’, Agay, France
  • 2012d: Construction des données en sémantique. HTL summer school ‘Expérience, Empiricité, Expérimentation en Linguistique : Histoire et Épistémologie’, Agay, France
  • 2009a: La conception syntaxique de a polysémie: une critique. Université de Lille III
  • 2009b: An affective-expressivist semantics for the emotion lexicon. Language and Cognition group, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
  • 2009c: Theta-roles, meaning, and successful explanation in linguistics. Optimal Communication group, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
  • 2009d: Semantic representation and natural meaning. Focus presentation, Free Linguistics Conference, University of Sydney

Commentary and opinion

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