Abstract

This paper provides an analysis of the importance of some present-day semantic theories for contemporary cognitive science. The question of the scope of cognitive science is discussed, followed by a short overview of the study of linguistics in this multidisciplinary enterprise. Finally, three modern approaches to semantics within this framework are discussed and their advantages and disadvantages are briefly summarized. Conceptual semantics is singled out as a rather plausible approach to the study of meaning, even though it is often deemed of lesser importance by authoritative scholars. Some speculations as to the further development of semantics are hypothesized