Language, Meaning, and Context

At one time the study of meaning in language was felt to be beyond the scope of rigorous scientific analysis. Recently, however, technical advances in linguistics and new insights derived from logic and philosophy have resulted in new approaches to the subject. In this compact and stimulating book, John Lyons outlines recent theories of linguistic semantics and assesses their strengths and weaknesses. He deals clearly and succinctly with important developments such as the notion of meaning postulates, truth conditional semantics and the relationship of semantics to pragmatics. Above all, he stresses that a language is an interlocking system in which each linguistic unit is dependent on the others not merely on one but on a number of different levels.This book will prove invaluable to students of linguistics and philosophy in search of an up-to-date introduction to linguistic semantics.