Semantic Primitives

This book provides a synthesis of Wierzbicka's theory of meaning, which is based on conceptual primitives and semantic universals, using empirical findings from a wide range of languages. While addressed primarily to linguists, the book deals with highly topical and controversial issues of central importance to several disciplines, including anthropology, psychology, and philosophy. - ;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. - ;A major synthesis of Anna Wierzbicka's work -

This volume is part of a research program which started with the publication, in 1972, of Anna Wierzbicka's groundbreaking work on Semantic Primitives. The first within the program to focus on a number of typologically similar languages, it proposes a French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian version of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) elaborated over the years by Wierzbicka and colleagues. Repetition is avoided through teamwork: a number of authors working on the languages under examination have had equal input in a set of five papers dealing with distinct parts of the metalanguage. Some of the findings presented here invite us to have a fresh look at what has already been achieved, and to amend some of the working hypotheses of the NSM approach accordingly. The volume also contains six case studies (on Italian sfogarsi, Portuguese saudades, Spanish crisis, French certes, Spanish expressions of sincerity and Italian and Spanish diminutives, respectively).

Concise Encyclopedia of Semantics is a comprehensive new reference work aiming to systematically describe all aspects of the study of meaning in language. It synthesizes in one volume the latest scholarly positions on the construction, interpretation, clarification, obscurity, illustration, amplification, simplification, negotiation, contradiction, contraction and paraphrasing of meaning, and the various concepts, analyses, methodologies and technologies that underpin their study. It examines not only semantics but the impact of semantic study on related fields such as morphology, syntax, and typologically oriented studies such as ‘grammatical semantics’, where semantics has made a considerable contribution to our understanding of verbal categories like tense or aspect, nominal categories like case or possession, clausal categories like causatives, comparatives, or conditionals, and discourse phenomena like reference and anaphora. COSE also examines lexical semantics and its relation to syntax, pragmatics, and cognitive linguistics; and the study of how ‘logical semantics’ develops and thrives, often in interaction with computational linguistics. As a derivative volume from Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Second Edition, it comprises contributions from 150 of the foremost scholars of semantics in their various specializations and draws on 20+ years of development in the parent work in a compact and affordable format. Principally intended for tertiary level inquiry and research, this will be invaluable as a reference work for undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as academics inquiring into the study of meaning and meaning relations within languages. As semantics is a centrally important and inherently cross-cutting area within linguistics it will therefore be relevant not just for semantics specialists, but for most linguistic audiences. The first encyclopedia ever published in this fascinating and diverse field Combines the talents of the world’s leading semantics specialists The latest trends in the field authoritatively reviewed and interpreted in context of related disciplines Drawn from the richest, most authoritative, comprehensive and internationally acclaimed reference resource in the linguistics area Compact and affordable single volume reference format

Presents, in simple and clear terms, the way in which humans express their ideas by talking.

The goal of this book is to integrate the research being carried out in the field of lexical semantics in linguistics with the work on knowledge representation and lexicon design in computational linguistics. Rarely do these two camps meet and discuss the demands and concerns of each other's fields. Therefore, this book is interesting in that it provides a stimulating and unique discussion between the computational perspective of lexical meaning and the concerns of the linguist for the semantic description of lexical items in the context of syntactic descriptions. This book grew out of the papers presented at a workshop held at Brandeis University in April, 1988, funded by the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. The entire workshop as well as the discussion periods accom panying each talk were recorded. Once complete copies of each paper were available, they were distributed to participants, who were asked to provide written comments on the texts for review purposes. VII JAMES PUSTEJOVSKY 1. INTRODUCTION There is currently a growing interest in the content of lexical entries from a theoretical perspective as well as a growing need to understand the organization of the lexicon from a computational view. This volume attempts to define the directions that need to be taken in order to achieve the goal of a coherent theory of lexical organization.