Semantics

From meaning to text

Volume 1

Author

Igor Mel’čuk | University of Montreal

Editors

David Beck | University of Alberta

Alain Polguère | Université de Lorraine, CNRS, ATILF

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027205964 | EUR 105.00 | USD 158.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027273437 | EUR 105.00 | USD 158.00

This book presents an innovative and novel approach to linguistic semantics, beginning with the idea that language can be described as a system for the expression of linguistic Meanings as particular surface forms or Texts. Semantics is specifically that system of rules that ensures a correct 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 the terms of Meaning-Text linguistics, this volume discusses in detail the problems of Semantic Representation —including the semantic structure of utterances, the semantics of Causation in English, and communicative, or information, structure. Based on the author’s life-long dedication to the study of the semantics and syntax of natural language, this book is a paradigm-shifting contribution to the language sciences whose originality and daring will make it essential reading for linguists, anthropologists, semioticians, and computational linguists.

[Studies in Language Companion Series, 129] 2012. xxi, 436 pp.

Publishing status: Available

https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.129

Table of Contents

Foreword | pp. xiii–xiv

Acknowledgments | pp. xv–xvi

Abbreviations and Notations | pp. xvii–xx

Organization of SMT | p. xxi

General Introduction: An Informal Characterization of Meaning-Text Semantics | pp. 1–16

I.Meaning-Text Approach and Meaning-Text Models

1 Some Basic Linguistic Notions | pp. 21–44

2 Linguistic Paraphrase | pp. 45–83

3 Meaning-Text Theory and Meaning-Text Linguistic Models | pp. 85–159

II. Semantic Representation in a Meaning-Text Model

4 The Semantic Structure of Utterances | pp. 167–241

5 Semantemes of Causation in Natural Language | pp. 243–288

6 Semantic-Communicative Structure | pp. 289–394

Index of Terms, Names & Concepts | pp. 421–429

Index of Linguistic Items | pp. 431–433

Language Index | pp. 435–436

“Mel’čuk is both creative and not afraid to take a non-mainstream stance. Though MTT remains relatively obscure to many researches for various reasons, we have good reasons to foresee a better understanding from a wider audience. A tremendous contribution in the field, this book will in due course prove itself to be well worth reading and will yield more significant and far-reaching theoretical and empirical results. Those unaccustomed to formalism will find it a great illustration of accurate description of a wide range of linguistic phenomena. And the formal schools will find in SMT an utterly novel design since current semantic theories are centered on truth-conditional logic. Semantics: From meaning to text is thus strongly recommendable to those interested in natural language processing, machine translation, lexicography, lexicon, semiotics, anthropology or semantics per se. Open-minded scholars in both theoretical and applied linguistics can cross the boundary and listen to Mel’čuk ‘s unique voice.”

Hongxin Zhang and Haitao Liu, in Journal of Linguistics 49(3): 710 – 715, 2013

Cited by

Cited by 33 other publications

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Barrios Rodríguez, María Auxiliadora

2020. Minimal and Inverse Definitions: A Semi-experimental Proposal for Compiling a Spanish Dictionary with Semantic Primes and Molecules. In Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication, ► pp. 191 ff.

Bhagat, Rahul & Eduard Hovy

2013. What Is a Paraphrase?. Computational Linguistics 39:3 ► pp. 463 ff.

Blanco, Xavier

2016. A Hierarchy of Semantic Labels for Spanish Dictionaries. In Automatic Processing of Natural-Language Electronic Texts with NooJ [Communications in Computer and Information Science, 607], ► pp. 66 ff.

Dubichynskyi, Volodymyr, Adam Jaskólski & Dorota Muszyńska-Wolny

2021. Leksykograficzna interpretacja rosyjsko-polskich paraleli frazeologicznych,

Echeverría, Carlos I.

2022. Once again on the parallelism between expression and content. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 54:1 ► pp. 24 ff.

Gladkova, Anna

2022. Emotions and attitudes in present day Russian through the prism of new words: Cultural semantics of zhest’ and related concepts. Russian Journal of Linguistics 26:4 ► pp. 970 ff.

Goddard, Cliff

2014. Author Reply. Emotion Review 6:1 ► pp. 66 ff.

Goddard, Cliff

2017. Natural Semantic Metalanguage and lexicography. In International Handbook of Modern Lexis and Lexicography, ► pp. 1 ff.

Goddard, Cliff

2018. Minimal English: The Science Behind It. In Minimal English for a Global World, ► pp. 29 ff.

Goddard, Cliff & Anna Wierzbicka

2016. Explicating the English lexicon of ‘doing and happening’. Functions of Language 23:2 ► pp. 214 ff.

Holden, Josh

2019. Semantic Primes In Denesųłiné: In Search of Some Lexical “Universals”. International Journal of American Linguistics 85:1 ► pp. 75 ff.

Iordanskaja, Lidija & Igor Mel’čuk

2021. Minimodel of semantic synthesis of Russian sentences. Lingvisticae Investigationes 44:1 ► pp. 101 ff.

Iordanskaja, Lidija & Igor Mel’čuk

2022. Names of Feelings in the Dictionary. International Journal of Lexicography 35:1 ► pp. 20 ff.

Kahane, Sylvain & François Lareau

2016. Word Ordering as a Graph Rewriting Process. In Formal Grammar [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 9804], ► pp. 216 ff.

Kim, Mi Hyun & Alain Polguère

2017. Korean Morphological Collocations: Theoretical and Descriptive Implications. In Computational and Corpus-Based Phraseology [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 10596], ► pp. 397 ff.

Kotsyba, Natalia

2014. How light are aspectual meanings?: A study of the relation between light verbs and lexical aspects in Ukrainian. In Events, Arguments, and Aspects [Studies in Language Companion Series, 152], ► pp. 261 ff.

Mel’čuk, Igor

2014. Dependency in Language. In Dependency Linguistics [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 215], ► pp. 1 ff.

Mel’čuk, Igor

2018. Les prépositions zéro en français. Lingvisticae Investigationes 41:2 ► pp. 269 ff.

Mel’čuk, Igor

2020. The Russian idiom ⌜kto-kto, a…⌝. Russian Linguistics 44:1 ► pp. 13 ff.

Milićević, Jasmina & Àngels Catena

2015. Translational Mismatches Involving Clitics (Illustrated from Serbian ~ Catalan Language Pair). In Modern Computational Models of Semantic Discovery in Natural Language [Advances in Linguistics and Communication Studies, ], ► pp. 235 ff.

PETUHOV, NICOLETA, IRINA LUPU & OANA STOICA-DINU

2022. "Visceral Organ Idioms in Romance Languages: Expressing Fear, Joy, Anger". Studii și cercetări lingvistice 2022:2 ► pp. 293 ff.

Poiret, Rafaël, Simon Mille & Haitao Liu

2021. Paraphrase and parallel treebank for the comparison of French and Chinese syntax. Languages in Contrast 21:2 ► pp. 298 ff.

Polguère, Alain

2015. Lexical Contextualism: The Abélard Syndrome. In Language Production, Cognition, and the Lexicon [Text, Speech and Language Technology, 48], ► pp. 53 ff.

Rocci, Andrea

2016. Semantics. In The International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy, ► pp. 1 ff.

Rocci, Andrea

2017. Meaning and Argumentation. In Modality in Argumentation [Argumentation Library, 29], ► pp. 33 ff.

Sanromán Vilas, Begoña

2017. From the heavy to the light verb. Lingvisticae Investigationes 40:2 ► pp. 228 ff.

Shaheen, Jonathan L.

2017. The causal metaphor account of metaphysical explanation. Philosophical Studies 174:3 ► pp. 553 ff.

Sobotka, Piotr & Magdalena Żabowska

2017. Wyodrębnianie, dekodowanie i klasyfikacja historycznych jednostek języka. LingVaria 12:24 ► pp. 113 ff.

Subbiondo, Joseph L.

2015. Language and Consciousness: The Perennial Relevance of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Language & History 58:1 ► pp. 55 ff.

Vincze, Orsolya & Margarita Alonso Ramos

2014. A proposal for a multilevel linguistic representation of Spanish personal names. In Dependency Linguistics [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 215], ► pp. 119 ff.

[no author supplied]

2016. Semantic Structure in English [Studies in Functional and Structural Linguistics, 73],

[no author supplied]

2023. Serbian Clitics [Studies in Language Companion Series, 229],

[no author supplied]

2023. General Phraseology [Lingvisticæ Investigationes Supplementa, 36],

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 november 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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