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We argue for an intimate relation between semantic externalism and semantic deference and propose a typology of speakers’ metasemantic views as revealed by their deferential attitudes. Building on this typology, we then offer a classification of metasemantic disagreements understood as verbal disputes between speakers who (consciously or unconsciously) hold divergent metasemantic views about the same word. In particular, we distinguish lower-order metasemantic disagreements between speakers who disagree on the exact source of meaning determination for a word yet agree on the kind of deferential attitude this word is liable to, from higher-order metasemantic disagreements between speakers who do not even agree on the suitable kind of deferential attitude. We demonstrate the fruitfulness of our classification through the concrete implications it has for conceptual engineering.

The Future You provides a glimpse into the fascinating and unique dimensions of medical and biomedical research in healthcare. As with Stephen Hawkings and his predicted breakthroughs in astrophysics, AI will continue to reveal deeper insights into the way the body works and the new strategies we need to adopt to lead healthy lives. Since becoming a doctor in biomedical sciences and a clinician, I've discovered that there is more that we don't know than answers to what we do know. Every human and other living thing on this beautiful planet shares this trait. As a patient with a rare disease who battles multiple sclerosis-like and Parkinson's-like symptoms, my life so far confirms my observation that we need to understand the making of us. In light of the advances in genomics, artificial intelligence, and microbiome research discussed in The Future You, I am more optimistic that the future will bring a lot of hope to patients such as myself. With a focus on that future, this book will serve as an invaluable primer for patients, physicians, healthcare innovators, investors, and the general public. A deep insight into healthcare innovation provided in The Future You is the ultimate blessing any reader will reach based on Hippocrates' declaration: \"Health is the greatest blessing in life.\" It is time to know you as a supreme being, so that you can become the most incredible version of yourself possible

This is a book about the meanings of words and how they can combine to form larger meaningful units, as well as how they can fail to combine when the amalgamation of a predicate and argument would produce what the philosopher Gilbert Ryle called a 'category mistake'. It argues for a theory in which words get assigned both an intension and a type. The book develops a rich system of types and investigates its philosophical and formal implications, for example the abandonment of the classic Church analysis of types that has been used by linguists since Montague. The author integrates fascinating and puzzling observations about lexical meaning into a compositional semantic framework. Adjustments in types are a feature of the compositional process and account for various phenomena including coercion and copredication. This book will be of interest to semanticists, philosophers, logicians and computer scientists alike.

In sign languages of the deaf some signs can meaningfully point toward things or can be meaningfully placed in the space ahead of the signer. This obligatory part of fluent grammatical signing has no parallel in vocally produced languages. This book focuses on American Sign Language to examine the grammatical and conceptual purposes served by these directional signs. It guides the reader through ASL grammar, the different categories of directional signs, the types of spatial representations signs are directed toward, how such spatial conceptions can be represented in mental space theory, and the conceptual purposes served by these signs. The book demonstrates a remarkable integration of grammar and gesture in the service of constructing meaning. These results also suggest that our concept of 'language' has been much too narrow and that a more comprehensive look at vocally produced languages will reveal the same integration of gestural, gradient, and symbolic elements.

The aim of this study is a comparative analysis of the role of semantics in the linguistic theory of four grammatical traditions, Sanskrit, Hebrew, Greek, Arabic. If one compares the organization of linguistic theory in various grammatical traditions, it soon turns out that there are marked differences in the way they define the place of 'semantics' within the theory. In some traditions, semantics is formally excluded from linguistic theory, and linguists do not express any opinion as to the relationship between syntactic and semantic analysis. In other traditions, the whole basis of linguistic theory is semantically orientated, and syntactic features are always analysed as correlates of a semantic structure. However, even in those traditions, in which semantics falls explicitly or implicitly outside the scope of linguistics, there may be factors forcing linguists to occupy themselves with the semantic dimension of language. One important factor seems to be the presence of a corpus of revealed/sacred texts: the necessity to formulate hermeneutic rules for the interpretation of this corpus brings semantics in through the back door.

Semantic priming has been a focus of research in the cognitive sciences for more than thirty years and is commonly used as a tool for investigating other aspects of perception and cognition, such as word recognition, language comprehension, and knowledge representations. Semantic Priming: Perspectives from Memory and Word Recognition examines empirical and theoretical advancements in the understanding of semantic priming, providing a succinct, in-depth review of this important phenomenon, framed in terms of models of memory and models of word recognition. The first section examines models of semantic priming, including spreading activation models, the verification model, compound-cue models, distributed network models, and multistage activation models (e.g. interactive-activation model). The second section examines issues and findings that have played an especially important role in testing models of priming and includes chapters on the following topics: methodological issues (e.g. counterbalancing of materials, choice of priming baselines); automatic vs. strategic priming; associative vs. “pure” semantic priming; mediated priming; long-term semantic priming; backward priming; unconscious priming; the prime-task effect; list context effects; effects of word frequency, stimulus quality, and stimulus repetition; and the cognitive neuroscience of semantic priming. The book closes with a summary and a discussion of promising new research directions. The volume will be of interest to a wide range of researchers and students in the cognitive sciences and neurosciences. 'Semantic priming is an important phenomenon of cognition and has engendered a huge research literature, a literature that is confusing, conflicting, and defiant of easy classification even to the expert. McNamara’s new book is a welcome addition to the field that clarifies and enlightens.' - Richard M. Schiffrin, Indiana University 'This is an outstanding book that provides a much-needed roadmap for both researchers and students into the specific details and broader implications of semantic priming research. The treatment of alternative theories is unparalleled in its sophistication, and the coverage of methodological issues offers invaluable guidance to those entering the field. McNamara has done a masterful job of distilling a rich, multifaceted domain into its core issues, findings and perspectives. The result is like a fine espresso – strong, balanced, and no serious work should be attempted without it.' - David Plaut, Carnegie Mellon University 'An Easily Accessible volume on semantic priming research that can potentially benefit researchers, graduate students, and upper division undergraduates' - Christopher Koch, in PsycCRITIQUES , August 2006 Part 1: Introduction. What Is Semantic Priming and Why Should Anyone Care? Part 2: Models. Spreading Activation Models. Becker's Verification Model. Compound-cue Models. Distributed Network Models. The Interactive-activation Model. Other Models. Part 3: Major Issues and Findings. Baselines. Automatic Versus Strategic Priming. Associative Versus 'Pure' Semantic Priming. Mediated Versus Direct Priming. Effects of Lag. Forward Versus Backward Priming. Subliminal Priming. Prime-task Effect. List Context Effects. Word Frequency, Stimulus Quality, and Relatedness Proportion. Semantic Priming and N400. Part 4: Summary and Conclusions. What We Have Learned about Semantic Priming

Types are the central organizing principle of the theory of programming languages. In this innovative book, Professor Robert Harper offers a fresh perspective on the fundamentals of these languages through the use of type theory. Whereas most textbooks on the subject emphasize taxonomy, Harper instead emphasizes genetics, examining the building blocks from which all programming languages are constructed. Language features are manifestations of type structure. The syntax of a language is governed by the constructs that define its types, and its semantics is determined by the interactions among those constructs. The soundness of a language design – the absence of ill-defined programs – follows naturally. Professor Harper's presentation is simultaneously rigorous and intuitive, relying on elementary mathematics. The framework he outlines scales easily to a rich variety of language concepts and is directly applicable to their implementation. The result is a lucid introduction to programming theory that is both accessible and practical.

Verbs and nouns vary in many ways-including in how they are used in language and in the timing of their early learning. We compare the distribution of semantic features that comprise early acquired verb and noun meanings and measure their effect on learning. First, couched in prior literature, we use semantic feature data to establish that features pattern on a hierarchy of complexity, with perceptual features being less complex than other features like encyclopaedic features. Second, given overall semantic and syntactic differences between nouns and verbs, we hypothesize that the preference for directly perceptible features observed for nouns will be attenuated for verbs. Building on prior work using semantic features and semantic networks in nouns, we find that compared to early learned nouns (N = 359), early learned verbs (N = 103) have meanings disproportionately built from complex information inaccessible to the senses. Third, we find that 16- to 30-month-old children's early noun and verb vocabularies (N = 3,804) show semantic relationships that differ in their use of this complex information from the beginning of vocabulary development. Last, we find that the complexity of nouns' and verbs' meanings affects their typical order of learning in early vocabulary development. Complexity differs in early noun and verb meanings, affects the semantic structure of children's vocabularies, and shapes the course of word learning. Les verbes et les noms varient à bien des égards, notamment dans la façon dont ils sont utilisés dans le langage et dans le moment de leur apprentissage précoce. Nous comparons la distribution des caractéristiques sémantiques qui composent les significations précoces des verbes et des noms et mesurons leur effet sur l'apprentissage. Tout d'abord, en s'appuyant sur la documentation antérieure, nous utilisons les données relatives aux caractéristiques sémantiques pour établir que les caractéristiques se répartissent selon une hiérarchie de complexité, les caractéristiques perceptives étant moins complexes que d'autres caractéristiques telles que les caractéristiques encyclopédiques. Deuxièmement, compte tenu des différences sémantiques et syntaxiques globales entre les noms et les verbes, nous émettons l'hypothèse que la préférence pour les caractéristiques directement perceptibles observée pour les noms sera atténuée pour les verbes. En nous appuyant sur des travaux antérieurs utilisant des caractéristiques sémantiques et des réseaux sémantiques pour les noms, nous constatons que, par rapport aux noms appris précocement (N = 359), les verbes appris précocement (N = 103) ont des significations construites de manière disproportionnée à partir d'informations complexes inaccessibles aux sens. Troisièmement, nous constatons que les premiers vocabulaires de noms et de verbes des enfants de 16 à 30 mois (N = 3,804) présentent des relations sémantiques qui diffèrent dans l'utilisation de ces informations complexes dès le début du développement du vocabulaire. Enfin, nous constatons que la complexité des significations des noms et des verbes affecte l'ordre typique d'apprentissage dans le développement précoce du vocabulaire. La complexité diffère dans les significations précoces des noms et des verbes, affecte la structure sémantique des vocabulaires des enfants et façonne le cours de l'apprentissage des mots. Public Significance Statement Verbs have meanings that are made up of substantially more complex semantic features than nouns, suggesting that learning verbs poses different challenges compared to learning nouns. For noun learning, the complexity of meaning seems to delay learning but for verb learning, the complexity does not delay learning. These findings suggest that supporting noun learning and verb learning may require different approaches.

This article proposes a research programme at the intersection of linguistic semantics, law, and judicial practice. Its aim is to explain and argue for a judicial and meta-judicial semantics, complementary to legal linguistics, by giving it theoretical and methodological foundations in the perspective of the semantics of argumentative possibilities. The hypothesis is that legal terms with a dual affiliation (legal and general lexicons), deploy in the contradictory arguments of judicial practice, their discursive potential (specified by conventional definitions), but also the argumentative potential of the meaning that these lexical entities have in the general lexicon. The illustration that supports this hypothesis is based on the analysis of crime, in the contradictory pleadings of judicial and post-judicial practices in French judicial system.