Semantic Theories

Abstract

Semantics, in the sense used in this book, seeks to understand the meaning of words and sentences, explaining the relations between expressions in a natural language and the world. This chapter intends to give a short account on semantics as has been developed before neurosemantics, and trace the path that naturally lead to its neuro form. The link that, in our view, connects the milestones of semantic theories to neurosemantics, is the aim of constructing precise mathematical models of the relations between linguistic entities and their referents. Therefore, much attention will be given to the transition from a descriptive semantics to its mathematical foundation in modern logic. It will be argued that the unsatisfactory aspect of this project was to have neglected the mind, which became on the contrary, the main object of investigation during the cognitive turn. We will describe the vicissitudes of cognitive semantics, its merits, and the counterside of a serious weakness in the level and robustness of its mathematical modeling.