Chapter 6: SemantiCS FUrther reaDinG

There are many books on semantics to choose from and we do not anticipate that readers will necessarily read all of our suggestions. Tutors will surely give advice. Griffiths’ (2006) Introduction to English Semantics and Pragmatics applies the approach of Chapter 6 to a wider range of topics, going a bit deeper and including pragmatics. Hurford, Heasley and Smith’s (2007) coursebook assumes no previous knowledge of semantics and covers a wide range of topics in a presentation that calls for the reader to do straightforward exercises in rela-tion to every concept introduced. Their Section 4 is a gentle way of making a small start in logical semantics. Kearns’ book Semantics (2000) is a reader- friendly way to considerably extend your theoretical understanding of semantics, including a good introduction to logical semantics. Her examples also cover a lot of interesting features of the meaning systems of English. Löbner’s (2002) Understanding Semantics is a compact, but comprehensive and scholarly introduction to the subject, particularly to be recommended for including examples from languages other than English.

Saeed’s Semantics (2008) is a book that has been refined through several editions. It includes more topics than Kearns and, like Löbner, offers some discussion of meaning in languages besides English. Theories of Lexical Semantics by Geeraerts (2010) is a comprehensible and orderly survey of huge swathes of writing about word meaning. Geeraerts’ Chapter 2 provides excellent context for our introductory chapter to semantics, which you are presumably now getting towards finishing reading. And his Chapter 5 is a balanced account of issues and achievements in Cognitive Semantics. Note, however, that the author himself says that ‘it is not a book on “how to do lexical semantics”.’ (2010: xv).

For a cognitive approach to meaning, read the relevant parts of Croft and Cruse (2004) or Evans and Green (2006) on Cognitive Semantics and Jackendoff (2002: Part III) on Conceptual Semantics.

Portner’s (2005) book is an accessible way of starting out in logical semantics and getting quite a long way into it. Without some prior knowledge of logic or logical semantics, most readers will find it difficult to grasp Cann, Kempson and Gregoromichelaki’s (2009) Semantics: An Introduction to Meaning in Language, but those who manage to work through the book will find up- to-date and interesting treatments of (amongst other topics) quantifiers, plurals, eventualities and tense.