[PDF] A Matter Of Semantics eBook

Author : Abdul Staten
Publisher :
Page : 274 pages
File Size : 19,4 MB
Release : 2013-06
Category :
ISBN : 9781612962238

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A Matter of Semantics helps students learn that college is not only about the academics. Of course the academics are important - they're vital, in fact. But, those social, emotional, and psychological lessons that college students experience outside of the classroom end up accounting for 70-80% of what they actually learn. What's more, after financial hardships, students end up leaving college not because they are incapable of handling the academic and intellectual challenges of college life, but because they are incapable of handling the outside-of-the-classroom elements of college life. But, every student has the ability to succeed in college and A Matter of Semantics helps prepare students for the rigors of college by attesting to the importance of personal exploration and encouraging students to spend as much energy developing their personal selves as they spend developing their academic selves. This book also provides a distinct look into the life lessons the college experience teaches as well as strategies for navigating those lessons. In the end, the college experience becomes about each student, and the unique journey they take to create the success they wish for in college and in life. As for the title - the institution of higher education is unparalleled in its ability to provide young adults with opportunities to learn and grow in ways no other institution can offer; so as long as teenagers go on to college, wherever they decide to pursue their education will, in the end, become just a matter of semantics.

Author : Robert A. Hipkiss
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 142 pages
File Size : 20,93 MB
Release : 2014-07-10
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 1135447306

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The subject of semantics has been appropriated by various disciplines including linguistic philosophy, logic, cognitive psychology, anthropological linguistics, and computer technology. As a result, it is difficult to define the study of semantics as an actual discipline without discovering what each field using a semantic approach to its subject matter has contributed to the understanding of what words mean. This volume is a result of those discoveries. Primarily an introductory work, this volume outlines the approaches that various disciplines have taken to the subject, attempts to show their relationships and their limitations, and presents the more important aspects of each approach -- from psychosemantics to artificial intelligence -- using pertinent source material from psychology, philosophy, logic, linguistics, and sociology. For individuals coming to the study of semantics for the first time, or those who are interested in what the overall study may offer beyond their specialization, this volume will provide a helpful overview of the subject.

Author : Thomas Ede Zimmermann
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 36,72 MB
Release : 2013-05-28
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 3110314371

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This textbook helps undergraduate students of language and linguistics taking their first steps in one of the core areas of grammar, introducing them to the basic ideas, insights, and techniques of contemporary semantic theory. Requiring no special background knowledge, the book starts with everyday observations about word meaning and use and then hightlights the role of structure in the analysis of the meanings of phrases and clauses, zooming in on the fascinating and vexing question of how speakers manage to meaningfully communicate with sentences and texts they have never come across before. At the same time, the reader becomes acquainted with the modern, functionalist characterization of linguistic meaning in terms of reference (extension) and information (intension), and learns to apply technical tools from formal logic to analyzing the meaning of complex linguistic expressions as being composed by the meanings of their parts. Each of the nine main chapters contains a variety of exercises for self-study and classroom use, with model solutions in the appendix. Extensive English examples provide ample illustration.

Author : Derek Ball
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 35,80 MB
Release : 2018-06-26
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0191059951

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By creating certain marks on paper, or by making certain sounds-breathing past a moving tongue-or by articulation of hands and bodies, language users can give expression to their mental lives. With language we command, assert, query, emote, insult, and inspire. Language has meaning. This fact can be quite mystifying, yet a science of linguistic meaning-semantics-has emerged at the intersection of a variety of disciplines: philosophy, linguistics, computer science, and psychology. Semantics is the study of meaning. But what exactly is "meaning"? What is the exact target of semantic theory? Much of the early work in natural language semantics was accompanied by extensive reflection on the aims of semantic theory, and the form a theory must take to meet those aims. But this meta-theoretical reflection has not kept pace with recent theoretical innovations. This volume re-addresses these questions concerning the foundations of natural language semantics in light of the current state-of-the-art in semantic theorising.

Author : Alexis Burgess
Publisher :
Page : 378 pages
File Size : 40,68 MB
Release : 2014
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 0199669597

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Metasemantics comprises new work on the philosophical foundations of linguistic semantics, by a diverse group of established and emerging experts in the philosophy of language, metaphysics, and the theory of content. The science of semantics aspires to systematically specify the meanings of linguistic expressions in context. The paradigmatic metasemantic question is accordingly: what more basic or fundamental features of the world metaphysically determine these semantic facts? Efforts to answer this question inevitably raise others. Where are the boundaries of semantics? What is the essence of the meaning relation? Which framework should we use for semantic theorizing? What are the intrinsic natures of semantic values? Are the semantic facts metaphysically determinate? What is semantic competence? Metasemantic inquiry has long been recognized as a central part of the philosophy of language, but recent developments in metaphysics and semantics itself now allow us to approach these classic questions with an unprecedented degree of precision. The essays collected here provide promising new perspectives on old problems, pose questions that suggest novel research projects, and taken together, greatly sharpen our understanding of linguistic representation.

Author : Emma Borg
Publisher : Clarendon Press
Page : 298 pages
File Size : 25,75 MB
Release : 2004-07-08
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 0191533645

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Minimal Semantics asks what a theory of literal linguistic meaning is for - if you were to be given a working theory of meaning for a language right now, what would you be able to do with it? Emma Borg sets out to defend a formal approach to semantic theorizing from a powerful contemporary opponent - advocates of what she call 'dual pragmatics'. According to dual pragmatists, rich pragmatic processes play two distinct roles in linguistic comprehension: as well as operating in a post-semantic capacity to determine the implicatures of an utterance, they also operate prior to the determination of truth-conditional content for a sentence. That is to say, they have an integral role to play within what is usually thought of as the semantic realm. Borg believes dual pragmatic accounts constitute the strongest challenge to standard formal approaches to semantics since they challenge the formal theorist to show not merely that there is some role for formal processes on route to determination of semantic content, but that such processes are alone sufficient for determining content. Minimal Semantics provides a detailed examination of this dual pragmatic position, introducing readers who are unfamiliar with the topic to key ideas like relevance theory and contextualism, and looking in detail at where these accounts diverge from the formal approach. Borg's defence of formal semantics has two main parts: first, she argues that the formal approach is most naturally compatible with an important and well-grounded psychological theory, namely the Fodorian modular picture of the mind. Then she argues that the main arguments adduced by dual pragmatists against formal semantics - concerning apparent contextual intrusions into semantic content - can in fact be countered by a formal theory. The defence holds, however, only if we are sensitive to the proper conditions of success for a semantic theory. Specifically, we should reject a range of onerous constraints on semantic theorizing (e.g., that it resolve epistemic or metaphysical questions, or that it explain our communicative skills). So Borg's answer to the question of what a semantic theory is for has a particular, minimal slant.

Author : Michel Breal
Publisher : Andesite Press
Page : 334 pages
File Size : 24,58 MB
Release : 2015-08-08
Category :
ISBN : 9781297585395

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This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Author : D. R. Dowty
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 333 pages
File Size : 48,41 MB
Release : 1981
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9027711410

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This book acquaints the reader with the fundamentals of truth conditional model-theoretic semantics, and in particular with a version of this developed by Richard Montague.