Linguistic Semantics: An IntroductionCambridge University Press, 1995 M11 30 - 376 pages Linguistic Semantics: An Introduction is the successor to Sir John Lyons' important textbook Language, Meaning and Context (1981). While preserving the general structure of the earlier book, the author has substantially expanded its scope to introduce several topics that were not previously discussed, and to take account of new developments in linguistic semantics over the past decade. The resulting work is an invaluable guide to the subject, offering clarifications of its specialized terms and explaining its relationship to formal and philosophical and to contemporary semantics and pragmatics. With its clear and accessible style it will appeal to a wide student readership. Sir John Lyons is one of the most important and internationally renowned contributors to the study of linguistics. His many publications include his Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics (1968) and Semantics (1977). |
Contents
Setting the scene | 1 |
11 The meaning of meaning | 3 |
12 The metalanguage of semantics | 6 |
13 Linguistic and nonlinguistic semantics | 11 |
14 Language speech and utterance langue and parole competence and performance | 16 |
forms and meanings | 22 |
16 Sentences and utterances text conversation and discourse | 32 |
17 Theories of meaning and kinds of meaning | 40 |
conjunction and disjunction | 162 |
implication | 167 |
negation | 169 |
66 Sentencetype clausetype and mood | 176 |
67 The meaning of interrogative and declarative sentences | 182 |
imperatives exclamatives volitives etc | 193 |
The formalization of sentencemeaning | 199 |
71 Formal semantics and linguistic semantics | 200 |
Lexical meaning | 46 |
21 Forms and expressions | 48 |
22 Homonymy and polysemy lexical and grammatical ambiguity | 54 |
23 Synonymy | 60 |
24 Full and empty wordforms | 65 |
25 Lexical meaning and grammatical meaning | 71 |
Defining the meaning of words | 75 |
31 Denotation and sense | 77 |
32 Basic and nonbasic expressions | 83 |
33 Natural and cultural kinds | 89 |
34 Semantic prototypes | 96 |
The structural approach | 102 |
41 Structural semantics | 103 |
42 Componential analysis | 107 |
43 The empirical basis for componential analysis | 114 |
44 Entailment and possible worlds | 117 |
45 Senserelations and meaningpostulates | 124 |
Sentencemeaning | 131 |
51 Grammaticality acceptability and meaningfulness | 132 |
52 The meaningfulness of sentences | 134 |
53 Corrigibility and translatability | 138 |
54 Verifiability and verificationism | 140 |
55 Propositions and propositional content | 141 |
56 Nonfactual significance and emotivism | 144 |
57 Truthconditions | 146 |
58 Tautologies and contradictions | 149 |
Sentencemeaning and propositional content | 153 |
61 Thematic meaning | 154 |
62 Simple and composite sentences | 157 |
72 Compositionality grammatical and semantic isomorphism and saving the appearances | 204 |
73 Deep structure and semantic representations | 209 |
74 Projectionrules and selection restrictions | 215 |
75 Montague grammar | 221 |
76 Possible worlds | 226 |
Utterancemeaning | 234 |
81 Utterances | 235 |
82 Locutionary acts | 240 |
83 Illocutionary force | 247 |
84 Statements questions and directives | 253 |
Text and discourse context and cotext | 258 |
91 Textsentences | 259 |
92 What is a text? And what is text? | 262 |
93 Utterancemeaning and context | 265 |
94 Implication and conventional implicatures | 271 |
95 Conversational implicatures | 277 |
96 What is context? | 290 |
The subjectivity of utterance | 293 |
101 Reference | 294 |
102 Indexicality and deixis | 302 |
103 The grammatical category of tense | 312 |
104 The grammatical category of aspect | 320 |
105 Modality modal expressions and mood | 327 |
106 Subjectivity and locutionary agency | 336 |
Suggestions for further reading | 343 |
| 347 | |
| 360 | |
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Common terms and phrases
addressee ambiguity assumption Austin basic chapter Chomskyan clauses component componential analysis connexion context declarative sentences defined definition deictic deixis denotation descriptive dictionary discussion distinction distinguish emphasize encoded entailment entities epistemic everyday example fact formal semantics function grammatical and semantic grammatical category grammatical structure grammaticalize Grice's homonymy identified illocutionary force implication implicature important interpretation interrogative lexemes lexical meaning lexical semantics linguistic semantics locutionary act logical logicians meaningful metalanguage metalinguistic modality Montague Montague grammar mood natural kinds natural languages necessarily negation notion nouns particular philosophical polysemy possible worlds principle principle of compositionality pronouns propositional content prosodic question reference relation relevant respect semanticists sense sentence-meaning sentence-type sentences and utterances so-called speakers speech acts spoken statements subclass synonymy syntactic temporal tences tense theoretical theory of meaning tics tion tional tive traditional traditionally true truth truth-conditional truth-conditional semantics ural languages utterance-inscription utterance-meaning verb vocabulary word-forms