Abstract
Interest in semantic taxonomy is being rekindled after having been for sometime under the cloud of both transformational and pre-transformational formalism. However, whether practiced now by European Structuralists (like Göran Hammarström), Interpretive Semanticists (like Jerrold Katz), or Generative Semanticists (like George Lakoff), this interest is neither very semantic nor very taxonomic. There is a fundamental difference between atomistic analysis and genus-species synthesis in every science - most obviously in biology, the most conspicuous and successful area of taxonomic work. When this fact is recognized, then the way is cleared for a significantly different approach to taxonomy in linguistics. In contrast to the entrenched atomism of almost all modern linguistics is the present attempt to construct a semantic taxonomy based upon the assertion as the minimum independent individual instance of discourse. There are six semantic kinds, or species, of assertion: Identity, Subclass-class, Individual-class, Agent-function, Object-function, Characteristic. These combine into genus complexes by means of definite conjunctional and syntactical conventions. The four semantic kinds of inter-assertional relationships are: Continue, Contrast, Conclude, Support.
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