Book description

This volume offers a general introduction to the field of semantics and provides coverage of the main perspectives. The underlying theme is that meanings are cognitively motivated and that expressing them through language is an essential means of cementing human bonding and of displaying it to others, both at the individual and the community level. Part I presents an overview of semantics and its place within the linguistics and the social sciences. Part II provides a grounding in formal semantics: the virtues of propositional, predicate, and lambda calculus, etc. are discussed. Also the differences between lexical and encyclopedic information, evidence for the conceptual/cognitive basis for meaning, sources for words, the effects of form and connotation, metalanguages for representing meaning components and relationships that include field theory and frame semantics, Wierzbickas semantics, conceptual semantics, role and reference grammar. Part IV presents case studies on the semantics of (generalized) quantifiers and comparatives. Part V is on the semantics of speech acts. There are exercises throughout that aid, complement, and test learning and understanding.

About the Author

Dr. Keith Allan is a reader in linguistics at Monash University.

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