“My intention was to give a general outline, to sketch a general division and, as it were, a provisional plan of a domain that has not been studied so far and which should be the result of work for many generations of linguists. The reader is therefore requested to consider this book a simple introduction to the science which I propose to call semantics.”

—  Michel Bréal

Source: Essai de semantique, 1897, p. 9 ; as cited in: Schaff (1962:3).

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Michel Bréal10
French philologist 1832–1915

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