The work assumes that the primary task of a theory of linguistic meaning is to describe the meaning of speech acts. This in turn presupposes a theory of semantics and a theory of prosodic meaning, as well as a proper treatment of the co-operative principle, context and background information. These matters are dealt with in detail. The second task of a theory of linguistic meaning is to identify what meaning is, to explain the relationships between sense and denotation, and to explicate the nature of meaningful properties and meaning relations. These matters are fully covered, and the work concludes with a summary of the principle arguments presented.

1. Beginning an account of linguistic meaning: speaker, hearer, context, and utterance (1) 2. What is meaning? (75) 3. Meaningful properties and meaning relations (140) 4. Lexicon semantics (216) 5. The semantic interpretation of sentences: a study of Katz's semantic theory and post-Katzian semantics (274) 6. Prosody and meaning (1) 7. Informational aspects of the utterance (59) 8. Speech acts (164) 9. Epilogue: on linguistic meaning (281)