Natural Language Semantics

Natural Language Semantics discusses fundamental concepts for linguistic semantics. This book combines theoretical explanations of several methods of inquiry with detailed semantic analysis and emphasises the philosophy that semantics is about meaning in human languages and that linguistic meaning is cognitively and functionally motivated. Providing the reader with the basic tools and skills needed to progress to original research, this volume introduces fundamental assumptions about meaning in language, discusses lexicological semantics, and explains formal semantic tools. It reviews cognitive and functional approaches to semantics, investigates the internal semantics of clauses and turns from the semantics of predicates to the internal semantics of noun phrases. Throughout each chapter, exercises are provided to reinforce the text and facilitate learning.

Keith Allan is Reader in Linguistics at Monash University, and is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities. He has taught in Britain, Kenya, Nigeria, and the United States. His research and publications focus mainly on aspects of meaning in language and his previous books are Linguistic Meaning (2 volumes, 1986) and Euphemism and Dysphemism: Language Used as Shield and Weapon (co-authored with Kate Burridge, 1991).