Semantics

Front Cover
List of Figures and Tables Preface Abbreviations and Symbols Part I Preliminaries 1 Semantics in Linguistics 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Semantics and Semiotics 1.3 Three Challenges in Doing Semantics 1.4 Meeting the Challenges 1.5 Semantics in a Model of Grammar 1.6 Some Important Assumptions 1.7 Summary Further reading Exercises 2 Meaning, Thought and Reality 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Reference 2.3 Reference as a Theory of Meaning 2.4 Mental Representations 2.5 Words, Concepts and Thinking 2.6 Summary Further reading Exercises Part II Semantic Description 3 Word Meaning 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Words and Grammatical Categories 3.3 Words and Lexical Items 3.4 Problems with Pinning Down Word Meaning 3.5 Lexical Relations 3.6 Derivational Relations 3.7 Lexical Universals 3.8 Summary Further reading Exercises 4 Sentence Relations and Truth 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Logic and Truth 4.3 Necessary Truth, A Priori Truth and Analyticity 4.4 Entailment 4.5 Presupposition 4.6 Summary Further reading Exercises 5 Sentence Semantics 1: Situations 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Classifying Situations 5.3 Modality and Evidentiality 5.4 Summary Further reading Exercises 6 Sentence Semantics 2: Participants 6.1 Introduction: Classifying Participants 6.2 Thematic Roles 6.3 Grammatical Relations and Thematic Roles 6.4 Verbs and Thematic Role Grids 6.5 Problems with Thematic Roles 6.6 The Motivation for Identifying Thematic Roles 6.7 Voice 6.8 Classifiers and Noun Classes 6.9 Summary Further reading Exercises 7 Context and Inference 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Deixis 7.3 Reference and Context 7.4 Knowledge as Context 7.5 Information Structure 7.6 Inference 7.7 Conversational Implicature 7.8 Summary Further reading Exercises 8 Functions of Language: Speech as Action 8.1 Introduction 8.2 Austin's Speech Act Theory 8.3 Categorizing Speech Acts 8.4 Indirect Speech Acts 8.5 Sentence Types 8.6 Summary Further reading Exercises Part III Theoretical Approaches 9 Meaning Components 9.1 Introduction 9.2 Lexical Relations in CA 9.3 Katz's Semantic Theory 9.4 Grammatical Rules and Semantic Components 9.5 Components and Conflation Patterns 9.6 Jackendoff's Conceptual Structure 9.7 Pustejovsky's Generative Lexicon 9.8 Problems with Components of Meaning 9.9 Summary Further reading Exercises 10 Formal Semantics 10.1 Introduction 10.2 Model-Theoretical Semantics 10.3 Translating English into a Logical Metalanguage 10.4 The Semantics of the Logical Metalanguage 10.5 Checking the Truth-Value of Sentences 10.6 Word Meaning: Meaning Postulates 10.7 Natural Language Quantifiers and Higher Order Logic 10.8 Intensionality 10.9 Dynamic Approaches to Discourse 10.10 Summary Further reading Exercises 11 Cognitive Semantics 11.1 Introduction 11.2 Metaphor 11.3 Metonymy 11.4 Image Schemas 11.5 Polysemy 11.6 Mental Spaces 11.7 Langacker's Cognitive Grammar 11.8 Summary Further reading Exercises Solutions to Selected Exercises Bibliography Index.

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Contents

Meaning Thought and Reality
25
Exercises
47
Semantic Description
53
Copyright

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About the author (2009)

John I. Saeed is Professor of Linguistics and Head of the School of Linguistic, Speech and Communication Sciences, Trinity College, University of Dublin. He is the author of several books, including Somali Reference Grammar (second edition, 1993) and Somali (1999).