Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. More specifically, semantics is concerned with the systematic assignment of meanings to the simple and complex expressions of a language. The best way to understand the field of semantics is to appreciate its development through the twentieth century. In what follows, that development is described. As will be seen, advances in semantics have been intimately tied to developments in logic and philosophical logic.
Though there were certainly important theories, or proto-theories, of the meanings of linguistics expressions prior to the seminal work of the mathematician and philosopher Gottlob Frege, in explaining what semantics is it is reasonable to begin with Frege's mature work. For Frege's work so altered the way language, meaning and logic are thought about that it is only a slight exaggeration to say that work prior to Frege has been rendered more or less irrelevant to how these things are currently understood.
In his pioneering work in logic Begriffschrift, eine der arithmetischen nachgebildete Formalsprache des reinen Denkens, which was published in 1879, Frege literally revolutionized the field. It is well beyond the scope of the present entry to describe Frege's achievements in this work. But it should be said that one of his most important contributions was to achieve for the first time a clear understanding of the semantic functioning of expressions of generality, such as 'every,' 'some' and so on.
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