This volume offers a general introduction to the field of semantics and provides coverage of the main perspectives.

A transcript of three lectures, given at Princeton University in 1970, which deals with (inter alia) debates concerning proper names in the philosophy of language.

This book emphasizes the role of semantics as a bridge between the theory of language and the theories of other cognitive capacities such as visual perception...

Non-Aboriginal; semantics of concrete objects in English e.g. household objects, cars and bicycles, animals, fruit and vegetables.

Introduction 1. Language and meaning Nothing is as easily overlooked, or as easily forgotten, as the most obvious truths. The tenet that language is a tool ...

Semantics of natural language; includes some Australian language examples.

Conceptual primitives and semantic universals are the cornerstones of a semantic theory which Anna Wierzbicka has been developing for many years. Semantics: Primes and Universals is a major synthesis of her work, presenting a full and systematic exposition of that theory in a non-technical and readable way. It delineates a full set of universal concepts, as they have emerged from large-scale investigations across a wide range of languages undertaken by the author and her colleagues. On the basis of empirical cross-linguistic (...) studies it vindicates the old notion of the "psychic unity of mankind", while at the same time offering a framework for the rigorous description of different languages and cultures. (shrink)

"Its publication should be a major event for cognitive linguistics and should pose a major challenge for cognitive science. In addition, it should have repercussions in a variety of disciplines, ranging from anthropology and psychology to epistemology and the philosophy of science.... Lakoff asks: What do categories of language and thought reveal about the human mind? Offering both general theory and minute details, Lakoff shows that categories reveal a great deal."—David E. Leary, American Scientist.

Semantic Structures is a large-scale study of conceptual structure and its lexical and syntactic expression in English that builds on the theory of Conceptual...