The science of semantics, or "semasiology" as linguists have agreed to call it, "has remained until our time like the outcast Cinderella in linguistics, a branch whose subject many esteemed scholars have not been able to properly establish or precisely formulate." The primary goal of this book is to improve the search for a semantic theory which, despite renewed interest, remains immature and unagreed upon.

The specialist author begins her study with some fundamental data: "all languages depend for their existence on words and sentences that have utility and meaning." Therefore, a semantic theory "for each language individually should be able to assign a meaning or meanings to every word and every sentence, such that this meaning is associated with the sentence in that language." The matter becomes very complex when it concerns the sentence or sentences, as "the meaning of these sentences depends on the meaning of the words they contain." It becomes imperative for semantic theory, then, to perform several adjustments between word meaning and sentence significance, and to determine the extent to which this relationship depends on word order or the grammatical structure of the sentence, in addition to the fact that sentences or words may be ambiguous and have multiple interpretations.

For a semantic theory to be adequate, "it must satisfy at least three conditions: first, it must, for every natural language, define the meaning of the word and the significance of the sentence and explain the nature of the relationship between them. Second, the semantic theory must be able to predict and anticipate types of ambiguity and confusion in the forms of the language, whether in its words or its sentence structures. Third, it must describe and explain the consistent relationship between the words and sentences of the language."

After a general introduction that sets the framework for all these concepts, the book divides its material into multiple chapters. It explores the meaning of the word, the relationship of this meaning to truth value, the meaning of the speech act versus the meaning of truth conditions, the relationship of meaning to the issue of use in language, the formal construction of word meaning and sentence meaning, the topic of ambiguity, the logic of natural language, and the relationship of semantics to "predicative" structure. The study concludes by describing the current state of semantics as an art and presents a vision for its future possibilities, built on the concerted efforts that must be fruitful between linguists, logicians, and philosophers to conduct "comprehensive and extensive research in the subjects of linguistics, logic, and the philosophy of language" to enable the formulation of hypotheses and suggestions in each of these scientific fields.

• Publishing House: Arab Scientific Publishers
• Year of Publication: 2009
• Number of Pages: 280
• ISBN: 9789953875446
• Cover Type: Paperback