Formal Semantics: The Essential Readings

by Paul H. Portner (Editor), Barbara H. Partee (Editor)

Overview

Formal Semantics: The Essential Readings is a collection of seminal papers that have shaped the field of formal semantics in linguistics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780631215424
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	10/11/2002
Series:	Linguistics: The Essential Readings , #1
Pages:	496
Product dimensions:	6.70(w) x 9.70(h) x 1.43(d)

About the Author

Paul Portner is Associate Professor of Linguistics and Acting Director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Cognitive Science at Georgetown University. He is the author of numerous articles on topics such as mood and modality, tense and aspect, and the syntax/semantics interface.

Barbara H. Partee is Distinguished University Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and is the author of several landmark essays in formal semantics. She has written and edited numerous books, including Mathematical Methods in Linguistics (with Alice ter Meulen and Robert Wall, 1990), Montague Grammar (edited, 1976), and Quantification in Natural Languages (edited, with Emmon Bach, Eloise Jelinek, and Angelika Kratzer, 1995).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1
Paul Portner and Barbara Partee

1 The Proper Treatment of Quantification in Ordinary English 17
Richard Montague

2 A Unified Analysis of the English Bare Plural 35
Greg Carlson

3 Generalized Quantifiers and Natural Language 75
Jon Barwise and Robin Cooper

4 The Logical Analysis of Plurals and Mass Terms 127
Godehard Link

5 Assertion 147
Robert C Stalnaker

6 Scorekeeping in a Language Game 162
David Lewis

7 Adverbs of Quantification 178
David Lewis

8 A Theory of Truth and Semantic Representation 189
Hans Kamp

9 File Change Semantics and the Familiarity Theory of Definiteness 223
Irene Heim

10 On the Projection Problem for Presuppositions 249
Irene Heim

11 Toward a Semantic Analysis of Verb Aspect and the English 'Imperfective' Progressive 261
David R Dowty

12 The National Category of Modality 289
Angelika Kratzer

13 The Algebra of Events 324
Emmon Bach

14 Generalized Conjunction and Type Ambiguity 334
Barbara Partee and Mats Rooth

15 Noun Phrase Interpretation and Type Shifting Principles 357
Barbara H Partee

16 Syntax and Semantics of Questions 382
Lauri Karttunen

17 Type-Shifting Rules and the Semantics of Interrogatives 421
Jeroen Groenendijk and Martin Stokhof

18 On the Notion Affective in the Analysis of Negative-Polarity Items 457
William A Ladusaw

Index 471

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"This volume contains a well-balanced selection of great papers covering fifteen vibrant years of semantic research. My own definition of a classic paper is a paper that is endlessly borrowed by students, but rarely returned. The papers in this volume all share the property that somewhere in the world somebody owns my copy of them. It's great to find them all collected here." Fred Landman, Tel Aviv University

"Truth-conditional semantics has its roots in the work of Frege and analytic philosophy, which was designed to overcome the vagueness, ambiguities, and dubious ontological commitments of natural language. Curiously, this intellectual tradition provided the very foundation for the serious study of meaning in natural language. This collection of seminal articles bears witness to this astonishing development; it should be essential reading for linguists and philosophers who are seriously interested in linguistic meaning." Manfred Krifka, Humboldt University

Editorial Reviews

"This volume contains a well-balanced selection of great papers covering fifteen vibrant years of semantic research. My own definition of a classic paper is a paper that is endlessly borrowed by students, but rarely returned. The papers in this volume all share the property that somewhere in the world somebody owns my copy of them. It's great to find them all collected here." Fred Landman, Tel Aviv University

"Truth-conditional semantics has its roots in the work of Frege and analytic philosophy, which was designed to overcome the vagueness, ambiguities, and dubious ontological commitments of natural language. Curiously, this intellectual tradition provided the very foundation for the serious study of meaning in natural language. This collection of seminal articles bears witness to this astonishing development; it should be essential reading for linguists and philosophers who are seriously interested in linguistic meaning." Manfred Krifka, Humboldt University

From the Publisher