I. Foundational concepts -- Chapter 1: The meaning of meaning -- Chapter 2: Referring, denoting, and expressing -- Chapter 3: Truth and inference -- Chapter 4: The logic of truth -- II. Word meanings -- Chapter 5: Word senses -- Chapter 6: Lexical sense relations -- Chapter 7: Components of lexical meaning -- III. Implicature -- Chapter 8: Grice's theory of Implicature -- Chapter 9: Pragmatic inference after Grice -- Chapter 10: Indirect Speech Acts -- Chapter 11: Conventional implicature and use-conditional meaning -- IV. Compositional semantics -- Chapter 12: How meanings are composed -- Chapter 13: Modeling compositionality -- Chapter 14: Quantifiers -- Chapter 15: Intensional contexts -- V. Modals, conditionals, and causation -- Chapter 16: Modality -- Chapter 17: Evidentiality -- Chapter 18: Because -- Chapter 19: Conditionals -- VI. Tense & aspect -- Chapter 20: Aspect and Aktionsart -- Chapter 21: Tense -- Cahpter 22: Varieties of the Perfect -- References -- Index

This book provides an introduction to the study of meaning in human language, from a linguistic perspective. It covers a fairly broad range of topics, including lexical semantics, compositional semantics, and pragmatics. The chapters are organized into six units: (1) Foundational concepts; (2) Word meanings; (3) Implicature (including indirect speech acts); (4) Compositional semantics; (5) Modals, conditionals, and causation; (6) Tense & aspect.Most of the chapters include exercises which can be used for class discussion and/or homework assignments, and each chapter contains references for additional reading on the topics covered.As the title indicates, this book is truly an INTRODUCTION: it provides a solid foundation which will prepare students to take more advanced and specialized courses in semantics and/or pragmatics. It is also intended as a reference for fieldworkers doing primary research on under-documented languages, to help them write grammatical descriptions that deal carefully and clearly with semantic issues. The approach adopted here is largely descriptive and non-formal (or, in some places, semi-formal), although some basic logical notation is introduced. The book is written at level which should be appropriate for advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate students. It presupposes some previous coursework in linguistics, but does not presuppose any background in formal logic or set theory.

Attribution

In English.

Description based on print resource