Semantics

This book presents an innovative approach to linguistic semantics, starting from the idea that language is a mechanism for the expression of linguistic meanings as particular surface forms (texts). Semantics is that system of rules that ensures a 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 terms of Meaning-Text linguistics, this volume discusses the Deep-Syntactic Representation and the transition from Semantics to Deep-Syntax via Semantic paraphrasing (the equivalence amongst Semantic Representations), Deep-Syntactic paraphrasing (the equivalence amongst Deep-Syntactic Representations), and the passage between the two. A chapter is dedicated to the Explanatory Combinatorial Dictionary, a semantically based and co-occurrence-centered lexicon. Reflecting the author’s life-long dedication to semantics and syntax, this book is a paradigm-shifting contribution to language studies whose originality and daring will make it essential reading for linguists, anthropologists, semioticians, and computational linguists.