Semantics: A New Outline

An elementary and wide-ranging survey of semantics, the study of meaning. Semantics has attracted more attention in recent years than almost any other part of language study — and from psychologists, philosophers and logicians as well as from linguists. Professor Palmer provides a clear, succint and shrewd guide to all the major topics of traditional interest and to the many recent developments in the field. He shows that semantics is not, and probably cannot ever be, a single, well-defined and well-integrated discipline. Rather it is a set of studies in the use of language in relation to many different aspects of experience, to linguistic and non-linguistic context, to participants in discourse, to their knowledge and experience, to the conditions under which particular bits of language are appropiate.
This is the most comprehensive modern survey of its kind. It is readily intelligible to beginning students and to the interested non-specialist and layman.