Semantics, Fifth Edition, is a comprehensive and well-balanced introduction to the study of the communication of meaning in language. Assuming no previous background in semantics and limited familiarity with formal linguistics, this student-friendly textbook describes the concepts, theory, and study of semantics in an accessible and clear style. Concise chapters describe the role of semantics within contemporary linguistics, cover key topics in the analysis of word and sentence meaning, and review major semantic theories such as componential theory, formal semantics, and cognitive semantics.

The updated fifth edition incorporates recent theoretical developments and important research in linguistic semantics, featuring an entirely new chapter examining the overlap between inferential pragmatics, including Relevance Theory, and traditional areas of semantics. Revised and expanded sections discuss the continuing growth and consolidation of cognitive semantics, various contextual features of language, conceptualization and categorization, and construal and perspective. This edition includes new exercises with solutions, up-to-date references to relevant literature, and additional examples with data from a wide range of different languages. This valuable text provides students with the background necessary to understand more advanced and specialized primary semantics literature, highlighting the relationship between semantics and cross-linguistic variation, language universals, and pragmatics.

With detailed examples from a wide range of contexts and a wealth of practical exercises, Semantics, Fifth Edition, remains the perfect textbook for undergraduate students of linguistics, English language, applied linguistics, modern languages, and??computer sciences.

JOHN I. SAEED is a Senior Fellow of Trinity College, University of Dublin, Ireland, where he is a professor in linguistics. He has published studies on Cushitic linguistics, particularly Somali and related languages, as well as Irish Sign Language and linguistics. He is the author of several books, including Somali and Irish Sign Language: A Cognitive Linguistic Approach (with Lorraine Leeson).

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

1.5.1 Introduction

1.5.2 Word meaning and sentence meaning

1.6 Some Important Assumptions

1.6.1 Reference and sense

1.6.2 Utterances, sentences, and propositions

1.6.3 Literal and non-literal meaning

1.6.4 Semantics and pragmatics

1.7 Summary

2 Meaning, Thought, and Reality

2.1 Introduction

2.2 Reference

2.2.1 Types of reference

2.2.2 Names

2.2.3 Nouns and noun phrases

2.3 Reference as a Theory of Meaning

2.4 Mental Representations

2.4.1 Introduction

2.4.2 Concepts

2.4.3 Necessary and sufficient conditions

2.4.4 Prototypes

2.4.5 Relations between concepts

2.4.6 Acquiring concepts

2.5 Words, Concepts, and Thinking

2.5.1 Linguistic relativity

2.5.2 The language of thought hypothesis

2.5.3 Thought and reality

2.6 Summary

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

3.5.1 Homonymy

3.5.2 Polysemy

3.5.3 Synonymy

3.5.4 Opposites (antonymy)

3.5.5 Hyponymy

3.5.6 Meronymy

3.5.7 Member-collection

3.5.8 Portion-mass

3.6 Derivational Relations

3.6.1 Causative verbs

3.6.2 Agentive nouns

3.7 Lexical Typology

3.7.1 Polysemy

3.7.2 Color terms

3.7.3 Core vocabulary

3.7.4 Universal lexemes

3.8 Lexical Change

3.8.1 Introduction

3.8.2 Lexical shifts in meaning

3.8.3 System shifts in meaning

3.9 Summary

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

4.5.1 Introduction

4.5.2 Two approaches to presupposition

4.5.3 Presupposition failure

4.5.4 Presupposition triggers

4.5.5 Presuppositions and context

4.5.6 Pragmatic theories of presupposition

4.6 Summary

5 Sentence Semantics 1: Situations

5.1 Introduction

5.2 Situation Types

5.2.1 States

5.2.2 Dynamic situation types

5.2.3 A system of situation types

5.2.4 Tests for situation types

5.4 Aspect

5.4.1 Aspect and tense

5.4.2 Comparing aspect across languages

5.4.3 Aspect and situation type

5.5 Modality and Mood

5.5.1 Modality

5.5.2 Mood

5.6 Evidentiality

5.7 Negation

5.7.1 Introduction

5.7.2 Clausal negation

5.7.3 Constituent negation

5.7.4 Metalinguistic negation

5.7.5 Polarity

5.8 Summary

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 Causation

6.8 Voice

6.8.1 Passive voice

6.8.2 Comparing passive constructions across languages

6.8.3 Middle voice

6.9 Classifiers and Noun Classes

6.9.1 Classifiers

6.9.2 Noun classes

6.10 Summary

7 Meaning and Context

7.1 Introduction

7.2 Deixis

7.2.1 Spatial deixis

7.2.2 Grammaticalization of context

7.2.3 Extensions of spatial deixis

7.2.4 Person deixis

7.2.5 Social deixis

7.3 Reference and Context

7.4 Knowledge as Context

7.4.1 Discourse as context

7.4.2 Background knowledge as context

7.4.3 Mutual knowledge

7.4.4 Giving background knowledge to computers

7.5 Information Structure

7.5.1 The information status of nominals

7.5.2 Focus and topic

7.5.3 Information structure and comprehension

7.6 Inference

7.7 Speech Act Semantics

7.7.1 Introduction

7.7.2 Austin's Speech Act Theory

7.7.3 Evaluating performative utterances

7.7.4 Explicit and implicit performatives

7.7.5 Statements as performatives

7.7.6 Three facets of a speech act

7.7.7 Indirect speech acts

7.7.8 Understanding indirect speech acts

7.7.9 Speech acts: a summary

7.8 Summary

Part III Theoretical Approaches

8 Meaning Components

8.1 Introduction

8.2 Lexical Relations in CA

8.2.1 Binary features

8.2.2 Redundancy rules

8.3 Katz's Semantic Theory

8.3.1 Introduction

8.3.2 The Katzian dictionary

8.3.3 Projection rules

8.4 Grammatical Rules and Semantic Components

8.4.1 The methodology

8.4.2 Thematic roles and linking rules

8.5 Talmy's Typology of Motion Events

8.6 Jackendoff's Conceptual Structure

8.6.1 Introduction

8.6.2 The semantic components

8.6.3 Localist semantic fields

8.6.4 Complex events and states

8.6.5 THINGS: Semantic classes of nominals

8.6.6 Cross-category generalizations

8.6.7 Processes of semantic combination

8.7 Pustejovsky's Generative Lexicon

8.7.1 Event structure

8.7.2 Polysemy and Qualia Structure

8.8 Problems with Components of Meaning

8.9 Summary

9 Formal Semantics

9.1 Introduction

9.2 Model-Theoretical Semantics

9.3 Translating English into a Logical Metalanguage

9.3.1 Introduction

9.3.2 Simple statements in predicate logic

9.3.3 Quantifiers in predicate logic

9.3.4 Some advantages of predicate logic translation

9.4 The Semantics of the Logical Metalanguage

9.4.1 Introduction

9.4.2 The semantic interpretation of predicate logic symbols

9.4.3 The domain

9.4.4 The denotation assignment function

9.5 Checking the Truth-Value of Sentences

9.5.1 Evaluating a simple statement

9.5.2 Evaluating a compound sentence with ¿ "and"

9.5.3 Evaluating sentences with the quantifiers ¿ and ¿

9.6 Word Meaning: Meaning Postulates

9.7 Natural Language Quantifiers and Higher-Order Logic

9.7.1 Restricted quantifiers

9.7.2 Generalized quantifiers

9.7.3 The strong/weak distinction and existential there sentences

9.7.4 Monotonicity and negative polarity items

9.7.5 Section summary

9.8 Intensionality

9.8.1 Introduction

9.8.2 Modality

9.8.3 Tense and aspect

9.9 Dynamic Approaches to Discourse

9.9.1 Anaphora in and across sentences

9.9.2 Donkey sentences

9.9.3 DRT and discourse anaphora

9.10 Summary

10 Cognitive Semantics

10.1 Introduction

10.2 Categorization

10.2.1 The rejection of classical categories

10.2.2 Embodiment and image schemas

10.2.3 Linguistic and encyclopedic knowledge

10.3 Polysemy

10.3.1 Prepositions

10.3.2 Modal verbs

10.4 Metaphor

10.4.1 Introduction

10.4.2 Conceptual Metaphor Theory

10.4.3 Features of metaphor

10.4.4 The influence of metaphor

10.5 Metonymy

10.6 Mental Spaces

10.6.1 Connections between spaces

10.6.2 Referential opacity

10.6.3 Presupposition

10.6.4 Conceptual integration theory

10.6.5 Section summary

10.7 Langacker's Cognitive Grammar

10.7.1 Nouns, verbs, and clauses

10.7.2 Construal

10.8 Construction Grammar

10.9 Summary

11 Inferential Pragmatics

11.1 Introduction

11.2 Propositions

11.3 Beyond propositions: Grice's conversational implicature

11.3.1 Introduction

11.3.2 Grice's maxims of conversational cooperation

11.4 Generalizing the Gricean Maxims

11.4.1 Horn's Q and R principles

11.4.2 Levinson's Q, I and M principles

11.5 Contextualism

11.5.1 Sentence and proposition mismatches

11.5.2 Gradable adjectives

11.5.3 Unexpressed temporal reference

11.5.4 Quantifier domain restriction

11.5.5 Cardinal numbers

11.5.6 Section summary

11.6 Relevance Theory

11.6.1 Introduction

11.6.2 Explicatures

11.6.3 Higher level explicatures

11.6.4 Implicatures

11.6.5 Implicature and explicature

11.6.6 Implicated premises and implicated conclusions

11.7 Lexical Pragmatics

11.7.1 Introduction

11.7.2 Polysemy and context

11.7.3 Microsenses and contextual modulation

11.7.4 Neo-Gricean lexical pragmatics

11.7.5 Lexical pragmatics in Relevance Theory

11.7.6 Section summary

11.8 Summary

Solutions to Exercises

Glossary

Index