Semantics for Latin—An Introduction

The advent of the new discipline of Formal Semantics around forty years ago has resulted in a vast expansion in our knowledge and theoretical understanding of grammatical meaning. Semantics for Latin collects together this new material, applies it to Latin, and makes the results accessible to a Classical audience. The issues confronted by Formal Semantics are mostly those that comprise the core subject matter of Latin grammar. Formal Semantics, however, is not just a new way of doing an old subject: the richness and explanatory depth of its analyses, together with their striking elegance and precision, go far beyond anything that was achieved by the rather vague notional semantics used in our classroom textbooks and in the standard German reference grammars. Thus, apart from its intrinsic interest, the material in this book will be of real practical value to students and teachers of Latin and, more generally, to scholars engaged in any discussion of Latin textual meaning.

A. M. Devine (Professor of Classics, Stanford University) and Laurence D. Stephens (Adjunct Professor of Classics, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) have collaborated on research in Latin and Greek linguistics for many years. They have written numerous articles and books on topics ranging from metrics and prosody to syntax and semantics.