This outstanding series is an indispensable resource for students and teachers – a concise and engaging introduction to the central subjects of contemporary linguistics. Presupposing no prior knowledge on the part of the reader, each volume sets out the fundamental skills and knowledge of the field, and so provides the ideal educational platform for further study in linguistics.
| 1 | Andrew Spencer | Phonology |
| 2 | John I. Saeed | Semantics, Fourth Edition |
| 3 | Barbara Johnstone | Discourse Analysis, Second Edition |
| 4 | Andrew Carnie | Syntax, Third Edition |
| 5 | Anne Baker and Kees Hengeveld | Linguistics |
| 6 | Li Wei, editor | Applied Linguistics |
This fourth edition first published 2016
© 2016 John I. Saeed
Edition History: Blackwell Publishers, Ltd (1e, 1997); Blackwell Publishing Ltd (2e, 2003; 3e, 2009)
Registered Office
John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK
Editorial Offices
350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK
The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK
For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell.
The right of John I. Saeed to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.
Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services and neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Saeed, John I.
Semantics / John I. Saeed. – Fourth edition.
pages cm. – (Introducing linguistics)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-118-43016-3 (paperback)
1. Semantics. I. Title.
P325.S2 2015
401 .43–dc23
2015015793
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover image: Wassily Kandinsky, Network Seen from Above, No. 231 (Geflecht von Oben, No. 231), 1927. © SuperStock
To Joan, Alexander, and Isabel
This is an introduction to semantics for readers new to the subject. The aim of the book is not to propose a new theory of semantics, nor to promote any single current approach, but to give the reader access to some of the central ideas in the field and an introduction to some of its most important writers. Semantics, however, is a very broad and diverse field and keeping the book to a manageable size has involved a fairly firm selection of topics. Inevitably this selection will not please everyone but I hope readers will be able to gain a feel for what doing semantics is like, and gain the background to proceed to more advanced and specialized material in the primary literature.
The book assumes no knowledge of semantics but does assume a general idea of what linguistics is, and some familiarity with its traditional division into fields like phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and so on. Thus it would be useful if the reader had already looked at a general introduction to linguistics.
The book is organized into eleven chapters, which are grouped into three main sections. Part I, Preliminaries, consists of the first two chapters and is concerned with the place of semantics within linguistics and its relations with the disciplines of philosophy and psychology, which share some of the same interests. Part II, Semantic Description, is the main part of the book and introduces central topics in the analysis of word and sentence meaning. Part III, Theoretical Approaches, reviews three important semantic theories: componential theory, formal semantics and cognitive semantics.
Each chapter includes a set of exercises to allow the reader to explore the issues raised, and suggestions for further reading. These will be a small selection of works which provide accessible investigations of the chapter's topics. In the text there are a large number of references to the semantics literature. These will frequently be works which are too specialized to attempt before the reader completes this book, but are given so that any particular interests may be followed up.
Examples from different languages are given in the transcription of the original source, and are commented on only when it is germane to the discussion. A list of symbols and abbreviations used in this text is given in the Abbreviations and Symbols list on pp. xix–xx.
I have used this book as a text in my courses in the Centre for Language and Communication Studies, Trinity College Dublin. I would like to thank my students for their responses and comments, which have been invaluable in getting the text into its present form. I am indebted to Philip Jaggar, Mark Keane, James Levine, and Feargal Murphy, who read the entire manuscript and made many suggestions, which improved the book and saved me from my worst mistakes. I am also grateful to those who have commented on particular sections, discussed specific language data, and provided me with source materials, in particular Abdullahi Dirir Hersi, Barbara Abbott, Martin Emms, Tim Fernando, Jim Jackson, Jeffrey Kallen, Ruth Kempson, Patricia Maguire, Cathal O Háinle, Sarah Smyth, Tadaharu Tanomura, Ib Ulbaek, Tony Veale, Carl Vogel, and Sheila Watts. None of the above is of course responsible for how the book turned out in the end; that is entirely my responsibility. The first draft of the book was written while I was enjoying the academic hospitality of the Department of African Languages and Cultures of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. I would like to thank the members of that department, in particular Dick Hayward and Philip Jaggar, for making my time there so enjoyable and profitable. That visit was supported by the Trinity College Dublin Arts and Social Sciences Benefactions Fund. Later revisions were made while I was a visiting fellow at La Trobe University's Research Centre for Linguistic Typology and I would like to thank Bob Dixon and Sasha Aikhenvald and their colleagues for their generosity, hospitality, and for providing such a stimulating environment.
This fourth edition has been revised and updated, and now includes a glossary and suggested solutions to all exercises. I would once again like to thank the readers and users of the book, together with reviewers, who have kindly given me their comments and suggestions. I would like to thank the editorial team at Wiley-Blackwell for their enthusiasm and professionalism. Finally I would like to thank Joan, Alexander, and Isabel for their love and support.
J. I. S.
accusative case
adjective
adverb
agent
adjectival phrase
article
causative
classifier
declarative
determiner
ergative
feminine gender
focus
future tense
genitive case
imperative
imperfective aspect
impersonal
indicative mood
instrument
location
masculine gender
noun
nominative case
noun phrase
preposition
patient
past tense
perfective aspect
plural
prepositional phrase
present tense
interrogative
recipient
sentence
singular
source
subjunctive
theme
verb
verb phrase
first person
second person
third person
ungrammatical
semantically odd
pragmatically odd
boundaries of a syntactic constituent
method of labeling a syntactic constituent, here an NP
Logical symbols:
not (negation)
and (conjunction)
or (disjunction)
if . . . then (material implication)
exclusive or (exclusive disjunction, XOR)
if and only if, truth-value equivalence
existential quantifier
universal quantifier
Less commonly known language names are introduced with the name of the large language family (phylum) they belong to and an indication of where the language is spoken, for example: Tiv (Niger-Congo; Nigeria).