Many textbooks in formal semantics are all versions of, or introductions to, the same paradigm in semantic theory: Montague Grammar. "Knowledge of Meaning" is based on different assumptions and a different history. It provides the only introduction to truth-theoretic semantics for natural languages, fully integrating semantic theory into the modern Chomskyan programme in linguistic theory and connecting linguistic semantics to research elsewhere in cognitive psychology and philosophy. As such, it better fits into a modern graduate or undergraduate programme in linguistics, cognitive science, or philosophy. Furthermore, since the technical tools it employs are much simpler to teach and to master, "Knowledge of Meaning" can be taught by someone who is not primarily a semanticist. Linguistic semantics can be studied as a stand-alone subject but only as part of cognitive psychology, the authors assert. It is the study of a particular human cognitive competence governing the meanings of words and phrases. Larson and Segal argue that speakers have unconscious knowledge about the semantic rules of their language, and they present concrete, empirically motivated proposals about a formal theory of this competence based on the work of Alfred Tarski and Donald Davidson. The theory is extended to a wide range of constructions occurring in natural language, including predicates, proper nouns, pronouns and demonstratives, quantifiers, definite descriptions, anaphoric expressions, clausal complements and adverbs. "Knowledge of Meaning" gives equal weight to philosophical, empirical and formal discussions. It addresses not only the empirical issues of linguistic semantics but also its fundamental conceptual questions, including the relation of truth to meaning and the methodology of semantic theorizing. Numerous exercises are included in the book.
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"..no one in recent decades has written a book of this magnitude aboutthe semantics of natural language. Certainly nothing available todaymatches this volume in depth, precision, and coherence." Zoltan Szabo , in The Philosophical Review (January1997)
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.About the Author
Richard Larson is Associate Professor of Linguistics at SUNY, Stony Brook. Gabriel Segal is Lecturer in Philosophy at King's College, London.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Review of Larson & Segal, _Knowledge of Meaning_,
This review is from: Knowledge of Meaning: An Introduction to Semantic Theory (Paperback)
L&S's theory might be termed a "cognitivized" version of more or less standard truth-conditional semantics - more properly, a series of versions, or T-theories. The authors' strategy is first to present the basic principles; then, beginning with a model that can handle only very simple data, to add more and more structure to accommodate more and more data, and along the way, to entertain departures which are later shown to be inadequate and discarded. Thus we go through PC+ (propositional calculus plus names and predicates), PCset (in which names are singletons), PCprop (in which predicates are properties), PC+DN (in which names are descriptions), VRT (which can handle pronouns and demonstratives), PredC (which can handle quantification), GQ (replacing quantification as done in PredC with generalized quantifiers, and bringing in definite descriptions). After anaphora and tense are introduced, a final version of the theory emerges. This is a formal approach to meaning; L&S's method of imparting it makes it easier to absorb than many textbooks do. Even so, a complete truth derivation for such a sentence as "Every woman loves her car" in GQ, for example, runs to about three typed pages.The central claim, and at the same time the central problem, with this book - aiming as it does at a cognitive theory - has to do with the concept "interpretivity." A T-theory is interpretive, according to L&S, if the connective "is true iff" yields the same pairings of object-language sentences and metalanguage sentences as the connective "means that." At first they say for example that PC+, PCset and PCprop are all interpretive; later they qualify this, because of ontological commitments. PCset commits us to the existence of sets and PCprop to the existence of Platonic forms: by using these on the right-hand sides of T-theorems, it could be argued, we lose interpretivity. We are saying, for example, that "John sings" means that "the individual named John is a member of the set of singers." We are attributing implicit knowledge of sets to speakers. L&S do not resolve the issue, but suggest that these ontological commitments are not so bad. We cannot formally discuss the meanings of quantifiers, or even develop PC+, without sets. The authors go on to argue that people talk, at least, as if they also assumed the existence of properties & relations. Ultimately, the ontological commitments made by a semantic theory do not clearly provide grounds for accepting or rejecting it. Since L&S want to make their approach relevant to cognitive science, the problems of coextensive proper nouns and empty proper nouns have to be dealt with; names are assigned "dossiers" which contain what speakers believe about their referents, and dossiers are connected to "concepts." The issue of what a concept is, is not resolved, but by the middle of the book we are assured that "what appears on the right-hand side of an axiom for a proper noun is an individual concept." (Taken literally, of course, this would mean that the meaning of "Socrates jumped over the moon" is "The concept of Socrates jumped over the concept of the moon.") The book proceeds at an even pace, has good exercises and very good notes, and presents the material clearly. The fundamental papers by Alfred Tarksi and Donald Davidson should ideally be read and discussed before beginning the book. Ken Miner
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bought it for a class,
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This review is from: Knowledge of Meaning: An Introduction to Semantic Theory (Paperback)
I bought this book for my semantics class with Richard Larson. It's a very good overview of semantics, and has a good progression from easy concepts to much more difficult ones. I'd recommend it to anyone taking a semantics class even if it's not the required textbook because it will definitely help.
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