A treatise in English on semasiology which attempts to establish a theory and classification of sense-changes on genetic psychological grounds. "The plan has been (1) to try to ascertain, as precisely as possible, on the basis of typical and well-authenticated instances, what has really happened to the meanings investigated; (2) to explain, with the help of adequate psychological theories, the conditions, causes, and nature of these changes." Only the basic meanings of single words are studied, relational and phrase meanings being excluded. To the author "the meaning of a word—in actual speech—is identical with those elements of a user's (speaker's or hearer's) subjective apprehension of the referent denoted by the word, which he apprehends as expressed by it." Among the subjects discussed are: language and its functions, signs and meaning in general, the definition of verbal meaning, analysis of meaning, production of speech, comprehension of speech, sense-changes due to various causes. Bibliography and index. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)