ABSTRACT
This chapter compares and contrasts cognitive semantics with two other modern approaches to linguistic meaning: truth-conditional (or formal) semantics and Relevance Theory. It explores how truth-conditional semantics was developed into the basis of a formal approach to linguistic meaning, needs to introduce the important distinction between sentence and proposition. The chapter provides an introduction to Relevance Theory, a modern approach that attempts to account for the pragmatic aspects of linguistic communication within a broader cognitive frame-work. Relevance Theory is a theoretical approach to communication in general, which views verbal communication as one instance of ostensive-inferential communication. The main architects of the theory, Sperber and Wilson, emphasise the role of ostensive-inferential communication, relevance and inference. They argue that both explicit and implicit meaning construction relies upon contextual and encyclopaedic knowledge in giving rise to inferences, and that metaphor relies upon the same communicative goals as literal language.
