To one who has just begun to make his acquaintance with the literature of general semantics, Mother Gorman's book will prove an invaluable guide. From her first chapter giving a historical sketch of the main ideas to her final chapter surveying the ways in which they have influenced education in America, the book is a mine of useful information. Mother Gorman is not a general semanticist. Her reservations about what she regards as the profound philosophical errors of general semantics naturally keep her from aligning herself with this school of thought. But she is an unusually interested bystander and a diligent scholar. Hence she has made an extremely thorough search of the literature, with the result that in many ways she knows a lot more about general semantics than many who call themselves semanticists.--S. I. Hayakawa

Now in paperback for the first time since its original publication, the material gathered here is perfect for anyone who needs a detailed and accessible introduction to the important semantic theories. Designed for a wide audience, it will be of great value to linguists, cognitive scientists, philosophers, and computer scientists working on natural language. The book covers theories of lexical semantics, cognitively oriented approaches to semantics, compositional theories of sentence semantics, and discourse semantics. This clear, elegant explanation of the key theories in semantics research is essential reading for anyone working in the area.