Within the project of reviewing and chronicling modern Arabic linguistics, and clarifying the theoretical and methodological value of Arabic linguistic writing, comes the study by Dr. Khaled Khalil Howaidi. This study is unique in that it focuses on a specific topic addressed by Arab linguists across different schools of thought: the level of semantics. It aims to trace the perspectives of Arab linguists on this level, seeking to understand the foundations they built upon and the trends they followed.

The author states, "...an idea prevailed among contemporary historians of linguistics that linguistic output largely falls into two main trends: a formal structuralist trend, which limits its linguistic approach to the structure of natural languages, and an interpretive trend, whose proponents go beyond description to interpretation, explaining the reasons behind linguistic phenomena. These are represented by the descriptive school on one hand, and the generative and functionalist schools on the other. The former mostly focuses on collecting, describing, and classifying linguistic data at various levels (phonetic, morphological, syntactic, and semantic), while the latter moves beyond mere description to the interpretation of these phenomena."

Based on this, the author structured the book into two parts. The first part addresses "Semantics in Descriptive Linguistics," while the second examines "Semantics in Interpretive Linguistics." These are preceded by an introduction that discusses theoretical issues related to the science of semantics, including its origin, concept, terminology, its central role in relation to other linguistic levels, and the distinction between semantics and pragmatics.

• Year of publication: 2012
• Publishing house: Arab Scientific Publishers
• Number of Pages: 343