Understanding Semantics (Understanding Language)

Description

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