ABSTRACT
Term coined by Bréal (1897) for the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the analysis and description of the so-called ‘literal‘meaning of linguistic expressions. Depending on the focus, various aspects of meaning may be prominent: (a) the internal semantic structure of individual linguistic expressions, as described by componential analysis, meaning postulates, or stereotypes ( stereotype2, also prototype); (b) the semantic relations between linguistic expressions as in synonymy, antonymy; (c) the whole meaning of sentences ( sentence meaning, principle of compositionality) as the sum of the meaning of the individual lexemes as well as the grammatical relations between them; (d) the relation of linguistic expressions-or their meaning-to extralinguistic reality ( referential semantics). All questions under (a)—(d) can be examined both diachronically and synchronically.
