Semantics
From meaning to text. Volume 1
Published on 6. June 2012
Book
Hardback
436 pages
978-90-272-0596-4 (ISBN)
Description
This book presents an innovative and novel approach to linguistic semantics, beginning with the idea that language can be described as a system for the expression of linguistic Meanings as particular surface forms or Texts. Semantics is specifically that system of rules that ensures a correct transition from a Semantic Representation of the Meaning of a family of synonymous sentences to the Deep Syntactic Representation of a particular sentence. Framed in the terms of Meaning-Text linguistics, this volume discusses in detail the problems of Semantic Representation -including the semantic structure of utterances, the semantics of Causation in English, and communicative, or information, structure. Based on the author's life-long dedication to the study of the semantics and syntax of natural language, this book is a paradigm-shifting contribution to the language sciences whose originality and daring will make it essential reading for linguists, anthropologists, semioticians, and computational linguists.
Reviews / Votes
Mel'cuk is both creative and not afraid to take a non-mainstream stance. Though MTT remains relatively obscure to many researches for various reasons, we have good reasons to foresee a better understanding from a wider audience. A tremendous contribution in the field, this book will in due course prove itself to be well worth reading and will yield more significant and far-reaching theoretical and empirical results. Those unaccustomed to formalism will find it a great illustration of accurate description of a wide range of linguistic phenomena. And the formal schools will find in SMT an utterly novel design since current semantic theories are centered on truth-conditional logic. Semantics: From meaning to text is thus strongly recommendable to those interested in natural language processing, machine translation, lexicography, lexicon, semiotics, anthropology or semantics per se. Open-minded scholars in both theoretical and applied linguistics can cross the boundary and listen to Mel'cuk 's unique voice. -- Hongxin Zhang and Haitao Liu, in Journal of Linguistics 49(3): 710 - 715, 2013More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Amsterdam
Netherlands
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 245 mm
Width: 164 mm
Weight
960 gr
ISBN-13
978-90-272-0596-4 (9789027205964)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
06/2012
1st Edition
John Benjamins Publishing Company
€130.99
Available for download
Persons
Content
1. Foreword; 2. Acknowledgments; 3. Abbreviations and Notations; 4. Organization of SMT; 5. General Introduction: An Informal Characterization of Meaning-Text Semantics; 6. I.Meaning-Text Approach and Meaning-Text Models; 7. 1 Some Basic Linguistic Notions; 8. 2 Linguistic Paraphrase; 9. 3 Meaning-Text Theory and Meaning-Text Linguistic Models; 10. II. Semantic Representation in a Meaning-Text Model; 11. 4 The Semantic Structure of Utterances; 12. 5 Semantemes of Causation in Natural Language; 13. 6 Semantic-Communicative Structure; 14. References; 15. Index of Terms, Names & Concepts; 16. Index of Linguistic Items; 17. Language Index