semantics

Semantic Theory (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics)
$55.00
Semantics is a bridge discipline between linguistics and philosophy; but linguistics student are rarely able to reach that bridge, let alone cross it to inspect and assess the activity on the other side. Professor Kempson's textbook seeks particularly to encourage such exchanges. She deals with the standard linguistic topics like componential analysis, semantic universals and the syntax-semantics controversy. But she also provides for students with no training in philosophy or logic an introduction to such central topics in the philosophy of language as logical form, truth, speech acts, analyticity, entailment and presupposition. The exposition throughout is deliberately argumentative rather than descriptive, introducing the student step by step to the major problems in theoretical semantics. Special emphasis is placed on the need to consider individual arguments within the overall perspective of semantics as an integral part of general linguistic theory. Written primarily as a textbook for undergraduates and graduates in linguistics departments, this book will also be useful to undergraduates in philosophy and in psychology where linguistics is a part of their course.

Drive Yourself Sane : Using the Uncommon Sense of General Semantics, Revised Second Edition
$18.00
This book covers the basics of general semantics in a very concise way. In my opinion it should be required reading in every high school. Learning to use the tools of semantics can be life-changing. It is stress reduction at its quintissential best. It should be read and the re-read until the recommendations are internalized.

Semantics: A Coursebook
$34.99
I sampled the Kindle version of this book and was disappointed. It wasn't well translated to the Kindle. Some of the notes and comments were copied over as images, not text - so you can't control the font size and have to zoom in on the image block to read it. And overall the content was hard to navigate using the Kindle. So while the content itself MIGHT be good, it's not good in the Kindle format.

Semantics: A Reader
$59.95
This is one of those collections of classics that easily gets lost among the multitude of books on the topic, but it is still one of the best I've come across. Most of the classics are here, Davidson's 'Truth and Meaning', Lewis' 'General Semantics', Kamp's original presentation of DRT, Groenendijk & Stokhof's 'Dynamic Predicate Logic', Barwise & Perry's 'Situations and Attitudes', Barwise & Cooper's 'Generalized Quantifiers and Natural Language' and the hard to come by (except in the ridiculously expensive 'Themes from Kaplan') 'Demonstratives' by Kaplan, to mention a few. One might question the rationale behind some of the selections, but as a whole this is probably the most comprehensive collection available. With, in addition, a long and illuminating introduction by the editors, this is a must for all students of semantics and philosophy of language, and for researchers that would like to have all of these often cited classics in one place.