Understanding Semantics

✍ Scribed by Sebastian Löbner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 393
• Series: Understanding Language
• Edition: second edition
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

For a full list of titles in the Understanding Language series, please visit https://www.routledge.com/Understanding-Language/book-series/ULAN

Understanding Semantics, Second Edition, provides an engaging and accessible introduction to linguistic semantics. The first part takes the reader through a step-by-step guide to the main phenomena and notions of semantics, covering levels and dimensions of meaning, ambiguity, meaning and context, logical relations and meaning relations, the basics of noun semantics, verb semantics and sentence semantics. The second part provides a critical introduction to the basic notions of the three major theoretical approaches to meaning: structuralism, cognitive semantics and formal semantics.

Key features include:
• A consistent mentalist perspective on meaning
• Broad coverage of lexical and sentence semantics, including three new chapters discussing deixis, NP semantics, presuppositions, verb semantics and frames
• Examples from a wider range of languages that include German, Japanese, Spanish and Russian.
• Practical exercises on linguistic data
• Companion website including all figures and tables from the book, an online dictionary, answers to the exercises and useful links at routledge.com/cw/loebner

This book is an essential resource for all undergraduate students studying semantics.

Sebastian Löbner is a Professor of Linguistics at the Institute for Language and Information at the University of Düsseldorf, Germany

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
1 Meaning and semantics
1.1 Levels of meaning
1.2 Sentence meaning and compositionality
1.3 Semantics: its scope and limits
Exercises
Further reading
2 Dimensions of meaning
2.1 Meanings are concepts
2.2 Descriptive meaning
2.3 Meaning and social interaction: the dimension of social meaning
2.4 Meaning and subjectivity: the dimension of expressive meaning
2.5 Connotations
2.6 Dimensions of meaning
Exercises
Further reading
3 Ambiguity
3.1 Lexemes
3.2 Lexical ambiguity
3.3 Compositional ambiguity
3.4 Contextual ambiguity
3.5 Meaning shifts and polysemy
Exercises
Further reading
4 Meaning and context
Part 1: Deixis
4.1 Person deixis
4.2 Demonstratives and place deixis
4.3 Time deixis
Part 2: Determination
4.4 Definiteness and indefiniteness
4.5 Quantification
4.6 Generic NPs
Part 3: Presuppositions
4.7 Presuppositions
4.8 Summary
Exercises
Further reading
5 Predication
5.1 Predications contained in a sentence
5.2 Predicate terms and argument terms, predicates and arguments
5.3 Verbs
5.4 Nouns and adjectives
5.5 Predicate logic notation
5.6 Thematic roles
5.7 Selectional restrictions
5.8 Summary
Exercises
Further reading
6 Verbs
6.1 Argument structure, diatheses and alternations
6.2 Situation structure
6.3 Aspect
6.4 Tense
6.5 Selected tense and aspect systems
6.6 Concluding remark
Exercises
Further reading
7 Meaning and logic
7.1 Logical basics
7.2 Logical properties of sentences
7.3 Logical relations between sentences
7.4 Sentential logic
7.5 Logical relations between words
7.6 Logic and meaning
7.7 Classical logic and presuppositions
Exercises
Further reading
8 Meaning relations
8.1 Synonymy
8.2 Hyponymy
8.3 Oppositions
8.4 Lexical fields
Exercises
Further reading
9 Meaning components
9.1 The structuralist approach
9.2 Applying the structuralist approach to meaning
9.3 Semantic features
9.4 Semantic formulae
9.5 Semantic primes: Wierzbicka’s Natural Semantic Metalanguage
9.6 Summary and evaluation of the approaches to decomposition
Exercises
Further reading
10 Meaning and language comparison
10.1 Translation problems
10.2 Headache, international
10.3 Relativism and universalism
10.4 Berlin and Kay’s investigation of colour terms
10.5 Consequences
Exercises
Further reading
11 Meaning and cognition
11.1 Categories and concepts
11.2 Prototype theory
11.3 The hierarchical organization of categories
11.4 Challenges to prototype theory
11.5 Semantics and prototype theo
11.6 Semantic knowledge
11.7 Summary
Exercises
Further reading
12 Frames
12.1 Barsalou frames
12.2 Verbs and frames
12.3 Nouns and frames
12.4 Frames and composition
12.5 Frames and cognition
12.6 Conclusion
Exercises
Further reading
13 Formal semantics
13.1 Japanese numerals: a simple example of a compositional analysis
13.2 A small fragment of English
13.3 Model-theoretic semantics
13.4 Possible-world semantics
13.5 The scope and limits of possible-world semantics
Exercises
Further reading
References
Index