Abstract:

Western semantics history could be summarized as historical orientation, psychological orientation and contextual orientation. In other words, Western semantics of the 19th century has been successively overlapped with biology, psychology and sociology. All “new theories” in modern times we are worshipping, including psychology, subjectivity, sociality, form and function, statics and dynamics, context and situation, metaphor and metonymy, and meaning domain and prototype theory, are beneath previous masterpieces. Owing to the three trends of formalism in the 20^th century, three cracks formed in Western humanistic view of language. Not until the 1960s, did a return to traditional humanistic view of language in contemporary Western linguistic study emerge. Based on dozens of previous original works of German, French, English and Russian languages, this paper traces the origins of these “new theories” in order to promote the research of the linguistic and intellectual history.

Key words: Western semantics, three orientations, theoretical achievements, contemporary theory, return