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Semantics: The Study of Meaning

Posted By: TimMa
Semantics: The Study of Meaning

Semantics: The Study of Meaning
Publisher: Pelican Books, Penguin Books | 1985 | ISBN: 0140216944 | English | DJVU | 400 pages | 3.17 Mb

In recent decades a revolution in linguistic thought has restored semantics to a central position in the study of language. Geoffrey Leech's book is a study of the issues thus brought to the fore…

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. In later chapters he deals with the theoretical core of the subject and considers in detail such questions as In what sense is semantics "scientific"?' and 'How much can the study of language in use contribute to the study of meaning?' Over the past two decades a revolution in linguistic thought has restored semantics to a central position in the study of language. Geoffrey Leech's book is a timely study of the issues thus brought to the fore. Although the study of meaning is as old as scholarship itself, the last fifteen years have seen an explosive growth of mental activity in the field of semantics. New theories and new models have developed in profusion; new ideas have superseded old ones at a rapid rate. So, less than five years after its original publication, I was already beginning to feel quite strongly that this book was out of date. This second edition is my attempt to rethink and revise it, taking account of the most significant developments of the last few years, as well as my own sense of the inadequacies of the first edition. Differences between First and Second Edition: The chapter-by-chapter plan remains largely as it was, but other revisions are substantial. For those familiar with the first edition, the most radical changes are these: (1) I have introduced a new Chapter 7, on problems and extensions of componential analysis. (2) I have replaced the last two chapters by four chapters, thereby giving more emphasis to the expanding influence of pragmatics (the study of language in use, and in relation to its users) on semantics. (3) I have replaced the system of diagrams and notations used in the first edition by a somewhat different system which will, I hope, be both simpler and clearer. This change of notation goes with a theoretical change from a phrase structure model to a dependency model in the representing of semantic structures. The chapters which are least altered are the first four. The Bibliography and the section entitled Background Reading have been thoroughly revised.

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Semantics: The Study of Meaning