The central aim of this study is to elucidate the nature of the semantics / pragmatics distinction in both synchrony and diachrony. The author proposes a definition of semantics and pragmatics that is orthogonal to the question of truth-conditionality, and discusses the status of various types of meaning with respect to this definition.
What is Meaning? Fundamentals of Formal Semantics is a concise introduction to the field of semantics as it is actually practiced. Through simple examples, pictures, and metaphors, Paul Portner presents the field’s key ideas about how language works. - explains the fundamental ideas and some of the most significant results of modern semantic theory - combines foundational discussion with simplified analyses of complex phenomena to provide readers with a sense of the fascination to be found in the details of the human language - includes exercises and thought-provoking questions to facilitate learning
Like other recent work in the field of generative-transformational grammar, this book developed from a realization that many problems in linguistics involve semantics too deeply to be solved insightfully within the syntactic theory of Noam Chomsky's Aspect of the Theory of Syntax. Dr Jackendoff has attempted to take a broader view of semantics, studying the important contribution it makes to the syntactic patterns of English.
Semantics, as the study of meaning, is centrally concerned with man's understanding of himself as a species that lives by communication. Philosophy, psychology and anthropology have all had a stake in it; but Geoffrey Leech sees semantics as belonging primarily to the newer discipline of linguistics, since meaning is inextricably a part of the language through which it is expressed. Taking a broad, linguist's-eye view of the subject, he stresses in the opening chapters the contribution of semantics to the understanding of practical problems of communication and concept-manipulation in modern society.
Adjectives and Adverbs: Syntax, Semantics, and Discourse
In this volume leading researchers present new work on the semantics and pragmatics of adjectives and adverbs, and their interfaces with syntax. Its concerns include the semantics of gradability; the relationship between adjectival scales and verbal aspect; the relationship between meaning and the positions of adjectives and adverbs in nominal and verbal projections; and the fine-grained semantics of different subclasses of adverbs and adverbs.
