《语义学新探》除了对传统语义学的主要内容进行论述之外，还引入了语言哲学、体验哲学、认知心理学、认知语言学的新理论，并用这些理论对以往语义学研究中的一些根本性问题重新进行了梳理和思考，做出了尝试性的阐释和论证。

Chapter 1 Semantics in linguistics
1．1 Definition of semantics
1．2 Semantics and semiotics
1．3 Semantics and pragmatics
1．4 Some important assumptions
1．4．1 Reference and sense
1．4．2 Utterances， sentences and propositions
1．4．3 Sentence meaning and utterance meaning
1．4．4 Literal and non-literal meaning
1．4．5 Refer and denote
1．4．6 Referents and extensions
1．4．7 Conceptual meaning and associative meaning
1．5 Meanings of meaning
1．5．1 The referential theory： meaning as naming
1．5．2 Conceptualism： meaning as concept
1．5．3 Contextualism： meaning as context
1．5．4 Behaviorism： meaning as behavior
1．6 Summary

Chapter 2 Language， thought and reality．
2．1 Language and thought
2．1．1 Language determines thought
2．1．2 Thought determines language
2．1．3 The language of thought hypothesis
2．2 Thought and reality
2．3 Language and reality
2．4 Summary

Chapter 3 Word meaning
3．1 What is a word？
3．2 Lexical ambiguity and vagueness
3．3 Sense relations
3．3．1 Synonymy
3．3．2 Antonymy
3．3．3 Hyponymy
3．3．4 Homonymy
3．3．5 Polysemy
3．3．6 Meronymy
3．3．7 Member——collection
3．3．8 Portion——mass
3．4 Summary

Chapter 4 Sentence relations and truth
4．1 Logic and truth
4．2 Necessary truth， a priori truth and analyticity
4．3 Entailment
4．4 Presupposition
4．4．1 Two approaches to presupposition
4．4．2 Presupposition failure
4．4．3 Presupposition triggers
4．4．4 Presuppositions and context
4．5 Summary

Chapter 5 Sentence semantics 1： situations
5．1 situation types
5．2 Verbs and situation types
5．2．1 Stative verbs
5．2．2 Dynamic verbs
5．3 A system of situation types
5．4 Modalityand evidentiality
5．4．1 Modality
5．4．2 Interpretations of some modal verbs
5．4．3 Evidentiality
5．5 Summary

Chapter 6 Sentence semantics 2： thematic roles
6．1 Thematic roles
6．2 Identification of thematic roles
6．3 Grammatical relations and thematic roles
6．4 Problems with thematic roles
6．5 The motivation for identifying thematic roles
6．6 Voice
6．7 Summary

Chapter 7 Context and inference： a pragmatic study of meaning 1
7．1 Deixis
7．1．1 Place deixis
7．1．2 Person deixis
7．1．3 Time deixis
7．1．4 Discourse deixis
7．1．5 Social deixis
7．1．6 Grammaticalization of contextual information
7．1．7 Metaphorical relationship between space， time and discourse deixis
7．2 Reference and context
7．3 Knowledge as context
7．3．1 Situation as context
7．3．2 Discourse as context
7．3．3 Background knowledge as context
7．3．4 Giving background knowledge to computers
7．4 Information structure
7．5 Inference
7．6 Conversational implicature
7．6．1 Grice's Cooperative Principle
7．6．2 Post-Gricean developments
7．7 Summary

Chapter 8 Speech act theory： a pragmatic study of meaning 2
8．1 Austin's Speech Act Theory
8．1．1 The performative-constative dichotomy
8．1．2 Felicity conditions
8．1．3 Collapse of the dichotomy
8．1．4 A theory of illocutionary act
8．2 Searle's theory of speech acts
8．3 Indirect speech acts
8．4 Indirect speech acts and politeness
8．5 Summary

Chapter 9 Decomposition of meaning
9．1 Componential analysis
9．2 Katz's semantic theory
9．2．1 The Katzian dictionary
9．2．2 Projection rules
9．3 Components and conflation patterns
9．4 Conflation patterns of motion verbs in English and Chinese．．-
9．4．1 Conflation patterns of manner verbs in English and Chinese
9．4．2 Conflation patterns of path verbs in English and Chinese ——．
9．5 Predication analysis
9．6 Summary

Chapter 10 Cognitive semantics
10．1 Metaphor and metonymy
10．1．1 Metaphor
10．1．2 Metonymy
10．1．3 Metaphor-metonymy interaction
10．2 image schema
10．2．1 Containment schema
10．2．2 Path schema
10．2．3 Force schema
10．3 Polysemy
10．3．1 Prepositions
10．3．2 Modal verbs
10．4 Categorization and idealized cognitive models
10．4．1 Categorization
10．4．2 Idealized cognitive models
10．5 Iconicity
10．5．1 Iconicity of order
10．5．2 Iconicity of distance
10．5．3 Iconicity of quantity
10．5．4 Philosophical interpretation of iconicity
10．5．5 Iconicity and other competing principles
10．6 Mental spaces
10．6．1 Connections between spaces
10．6．2 Referential opacity
10．6．3 Presupposition
10．7 Conceptual blending
10．7．1 The origins of Blending Theory
10．7．2 Towards a theory of conceptual integration
10．7．3 The nature of blending
10．7．4 Contrasting Blending Theory with Conceptual Metaphor Theory
10．8 Grammaticalization
10．9 Summary
Bibliography