Books by John (University of Cambridge) Lyons

Linguistic Semantics: An Introduction is the successor to Sir John Lyons's important study Language, Meaning and Context (1981).While preserving the general structure of the earlier book, the author has substantially expanded its scope to introduce several topics that were not previously discussed, and to take into account developments in linguistic semantics. The resulting work is an invaluable guide to the subject, offering clarifications of its specialised terms and explaining its relationship to formal and philosophical semantics and to contemporary pragmatics. With its clear and accessible style it will appeal to a wide student readership. Sir John Lyons is one of the most important and internationally renowned contributors to the study of linguistics. His many publications include Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics (1968) and Semantics (1977).

Volume 1 provides a general and comprehensive introduction to semantics, synthesizing work on meaning and communication from many disciplines and setting semantics in the larger framework of semiotics.

This 1981 book is a general introduction to linguistics and the study of language, intended particularly for beginning students and readers with no previous knowledge or training in the subject. There is first a general account of the nature of language and of the aims, methods and basic principles of linguistic theory. John Lyons then introduces in turn each of the main sub-fields of linguistics: the sounds of language, grammar, semantics, language change, psycholinguistics: the sounds of language, grammar, semantics, language change, psycholinguistics, language and culture. Throughout the book he emphasizes particularly those aspects of the discipline that seem fundamental and most likely to remain important. He stresses throughout the cultural at least as much as the biological context of human language, and shows how the linguist's concerns connect productively with those of the traditional humanities and the social sciences. Each chapter has a wide-ranging set of discussion questions and revision exercises, and extensive suggestions for further reading. The exposition is marked throughout by the author's characteristic clarity, balance and authority.