Semantics, Metasemantics, Aboutness

By Ori Simchen

Semantics aims to describe the significance (or meaning) of linguistic expressions in a systematic way. Metasemantics, or foundational semantics, asks how expressions gain their significance in the first place - what makes it the case that expressions mean what they do.

Metasemantics has recently been discussed extensively by philosophers of language, philosophers of mind, and philosophically minded linguists and psychologists. A large concern is semantic indeterminacy, the worry that there is no fact of the matter as to the semantic significance of our words. Ori Simchen offers a distinctly metasemantic strategy to counter this threat.

Semantics, Metasemantics, Aboutness is the first book-length treatment of metasemantics and its relation to the thriving research program of truth-conditional semantics.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 019879214X
• ISBN13: 9780198792147
• Release Date: April 2017
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 178 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.5"