Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised May 27, 2026

Metasemantics

In the philosophy of language and metaphysics, metasemantics is the study of the foundations of natural language semantics. Metasemantics searches for "the proper understanding of compositionality, the object of truth-conditional analysis, metaphysics of reference, as well as, and most importantly, the scope of semantic theory itself" and asks "how it is that expressions become endowed with their semantic significance".

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In the philosophy of language and metaphysics, metasemantics is the study of the foundations of natural language semantics (the philosophical study of meaning).123 Metasemantics searches for "the proper understanding of compositionality, the object of truth-conditional analysis, metaphysics of reference, as well as, and most importantly, the scope of semantic theory itself"4 and asks "how it is that expressions become endowed with their semantic significance".5

See also

See also

References

References

  1. Alexis Burgess, Brett Sherman (eds.), Metasemantics: New Essays on the Foundations of Meaning, Oxford University Press, 2014, p. 29 n. 13.
  2. "Review of Metasemantics: New Essays on the Foundations of Meaning". Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
  3. Stainton, Robert J. Philosophical Perspectives on Language. Peterborough, Ont., Broadview Press, 1996, p. 36.
  4. Kasia M. Jaszczolt, Meaning in Linguistic Interaction: Semantics, Metasemantics, Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press, 2016, p. viii.
  5. Ori Simchen, Semantics, Metasemantics, Aboutness, Oxford University Press, 2017, p. xiii.