Understanding Semantics

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