《外教社学术阅读文库：语义学经典论文选读》选编了语言哲学、形式语义学、语用学和认知语义学领域内的20篇经典论文，其中不乏弗雷格、罗素、斯特劳森、格赖斯、莱文森等大家的奠基之作。阅读这些经典的篇章，不仅有助于我们掌握语言学学科的基础理论知识，为以后深入研究打好基本功，而且对提高我们自身的人文素养也大有裨益。

编者的话
第一部分：语言哲学
导读
Gottlob Frege：On Sense and Reference
Bertrand Russell：Descriptions
Pefer F.Strawson：On Referring
Keith S.Donnellan：Reference and Definite Descriptions
Saul K.Kripke：Naming and Necessity：Lecture Ⅱ

第二部分：形式语义学
导读
Donald Davidson：Truth and Meaning
Donald Davidson：The Logical Form of Action Sentences
David Kaplan：On the Logic of Demonstratives
Irene Helm：File Change Semantics and the Familiarity Theory of Definiteness
David Lewis：Scorekeeping in a Language Game

第三部分：语用学
导读
H.P.Grice：Logic and Conversation
Francois Recanati：The Pragmatics of What is Said
Laurence R.Horn：Toward a New Taxonomy for Pragmatic Inference：Q—based and R—based Implicature
Stephen C.Levinson：Three Levels of Meaning
Irene Helm：On the Projection Problem for Presuppositions

第四部分：认知语义学
导读
Dirk Geeraerts：Prospects and Problems of Prototype Theory
George Lakoff：The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor
William Croft：The Role of Domains in the Interpretation of Metaphors and Metonymies
Charles Fillmore：Frame Semantics
Michael Tomasello：First Steps toward a Usage—based Theory of Language Acquisition