{"id":2229,"date":"2012-08-23T15:00:48","date_gmt":"2012-08-23T13:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=2229"},"modified":"2012-08-22T10:30:09","modified_gmt":"2012-08-22T08:30:09","slug":"meaning-a-slim-guide-to-semantics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=2229","title":{"rendered":"Meaning: A slim guide to semantics"},"content":{"rendered":"
Meaning<\/strong>: A slim guide to semantics. By Paul Elbourne<\/strong>. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp, viii, 174. ISBN 9780199696628<\/a>. $24.95.<\/div>\n

Reviewed by Joshua Thusat<\/a><\/strong>, Harry S Truman College<\/em><\/p>\n

Although this book seems an impossibly slim introduction to the study of semantics, Paul Elbourne contextualizes, in eight chapters, the trends in this sub-field of linguistics and the history of these trends. In what could be described as an independent study, E conversationally explains how we analyze and make meaning, introducing us to the debate between referentialist and internalist views of word meaning, the many mathematical connections to analyzing meaning, and contextualization problems. This approach fits a wide audience, whether a new student to the field of linguistics, a schooled philosopher of language, or someone who simply wants to refresh their foundational knowledge.<\/p>\n

Ch. 1 details the problems with defining a word. For E, this serves to introduce the subject of semantics and informs the reader of immediate complexities in identifying clear, universal descriptions of terms. With the example of a chair, E highlights the difference between the intension and extension of word meanings. Ch. 2 explains word meanings through the referentialist and internalist views. E presents the philosophical traditions behind these two views, branching from realists and the nominalists, and nominalism and Platonism. This is one of the most important chapters, as this debate reappears in subsequent chapters.<\/p>\n

In his chapter on semantic properties of words, E goes through synonymy, ambiguity, and vagueness. Underneath each, other terms are introduced and explained, like generality (under vagueness) or polysemy and homonymy (under ambiguity). E presents an important study on \u2018lexical activation\u2019 using magnetoencephalography (MEG) to view electric currents in the brain. This study reveals telling information about phonological inhibition and semantic priming.<\/p>\n

Ch. 2 is continued in Ch. 4 when E introduces how meaning is analyzed in sentences. E returns to set theory, but introduces the mathematical discussion of alternate universes, or possible worlds. E teaches negative-polarity items licensors to help the reader understand the idea of possible worlds. With such a complex discussion of sentence meanings, Ch. 5 eliminates some confusion by offering the necessary syntactic relationships. Showing the reader the varying nodes, and how constituents work on paper further elucidates how those relationships appear in our minds.<\/p>\n

In Ch. 6, E introduces meaning and grammar by returning to Russellian set theory and possible worlds, but by focusing on lambda notation. In Ch. 7, E turns away from how we analyze words and sentences to have one kind of meaning and turns toward meaning and context. Indexicals are the focus, but the importance of indexicals is broken down by various professionals, like David Kaplan, who breaks sentences down into content and character. E moves on to other important terms like bound readings or bound variable readings, and bound anaphora. These are meaning varieties depending on context. This section also introduces a brief discussion of pragmatics, mentioning Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson\u2019s relevance theory; but, as this is a book on semantics, it does not linger long. Finally, Ch. 8 sums up how thought makes language, or how language makes thought, introducing the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and its spectrum from strong to restricted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meaning: A slim guide to semantics. By Paul Elbourne. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp, viii, 174. ISBN 9780199696628. $24.95. Reviewed by Joshua Thusat, Harry S Truman College Although this book seems an impossibly slim introduction to the study of semantics, Paul Elbourne contextualizes, in eight chapters, the trends in this sub-field of linguistics and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2229"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2229"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2230,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2229\/revisions\/2230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}