1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910972502703321

Autore

Lobner Sebastian

Titolo

Understanding semantics / / Sebastian Lobner

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York, NY : , : Routledge, , 2013

ISBN

1-134-05278-2

1-4441-2243-6

0-203-52833-6

1-134-05271-5

Edizione

[2nd ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (393 p.)

Collana

Understanding language

Understanding language series

Disciplina

401/.43

Soggetti

Semantics

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Previous edition published under Hodder Education, the second edition is now published under Routledge after Hodder Education Linguistic titles were acquired in 2012.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

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 ambiguity3.4 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 roles5.7 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 Hyponymy8.3 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 reading11 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

Sommario/riassunto

Understanding Semantics, Second Edition, provides an engaging and accessible introduction to linguistic semantics. The first part takes the reader through a step-by-step guide to the main phenomena and notions of semantics, covering levels and dimensions of meaning, ambiguity, meaning and context, logical relations and meaning relations, the basics of noun semantics, verb semantics and sentence semantics. The second part provides a critical introduction to the basic notions of the three major theoretical approaches to meaning: structuralism, cognitive semantics and formal semantics.Key feature