The study of meaning in language has developed dramatically over the last fifty years. Semantics is distinctive as it not only presents a general introduction to the topic, including the most recent developments, but it also provides a unique perspective for addressing current issues. It opens by introducing readers to the study of logic (natural deduction) as the background against which developments have taken place. This demonstrates the link between semantics and the study of reasoning and how this view can provide new solutions to the puzzles that have plagued the approaches presented in other textbooks. The major subject areas of semantics are discussed, including quantification, anaphora and discourse, tense and aspect, ellipsis and context, and word meaning. The book also presents state-of-the-art research in topics at the forefront of semantics.

List of figures p. x Preface p. xi Preliminaries for model building p. 1 Introduction p. 1 Explaining semantics: starting from words? p. 4 Constructing a semantic theory p. 8 Breaking out of the language circle p. 9 The language-of-thought hypothesis p. 9 Language and the world p. 11 Truth-conditional semantics p. 12 Logic, meaning and context p. 17 Further reading p. 21 The syntax of logical inference p. 22 Language and logic p. 22 Proof theory and model theory: syntax vs. semantics? p. 24 Logic, inference and natural-language semantics p. 26 Natural deduction: a syntactic mode of inference p. 27 Natural deduction for propositional logic p. 28 Conditional Elimination: Modus Ponens p. 29 Conditional Introduction: Conditional Proof p. 33 Negation and extending the set of conditional rules p. 35 The Elimination and Introduction rules for ^ p. 38 v Introduction and v Elimination p. 41 Reduction and Absurdum: a constrained variant p. 44 Commentary: propositional logic for linguists p. 47 Predicate logic p. 49 Predicate logic syntax p. 50 Proof rules of predicate logic p. 52 Defining inference proof-theoretically p. 62 The proof-theoretic force of the logical conditional p. 62 The de Morgan equivalences p. 64 Commentary: theoretical implications p. 65 Further reading p. 66 The semantics of logical inference: models and semantic types p. 68 Model-theoretic evaluation p. 68 Models for propositional logic p. 69 Model theory for predicate logic p. 71 Defining a model p. 73 Set theory: an introduction p. 74 Model-theoretic semantics for predicate logic p. 75 Model-theoretic evaluation of quantified formulae p. 77 Inferential relations semantically defined p. 81 Evaluating syntactic and semantic characterisations of inference p. 83 Type theory p. 85 The lambda operator p. 87 Types reprised p. 92 Interpreting typed expressions p. 94 Summary p. 97 Further reading p. 98 Quantification and plurality p. 99 Generalised quantifiers p. 99 Quantifiers, compositionality and coverage p. 99 Towards compositional quantification p. 102 Interpreting quantifiers p. 105 Cardinality quantifiers p. 109 Contextual quantifiers p. 112 Conservativity and monotonicity p. 114 Plurals p. 119 Interpreting plural noun phrases p. 120 Extending the ontology p. 125 Collective and distributive predicates p. 129 Mass terms p. 133 Coda p. 134 Further reading p. 135 Anaphora, discourse and context p. 137 Noun phrases and discourse properties p. 137 Anaphora and quantification p. 140 Types of anaphora p. 140 E-type pronouns p. 143 Discourse Representation Theory (DRT) p. 147 Introduction p. 147 DRS construction p. 151 Embedding p. 155 Interpreting DRSs p. 159 Accessibility p. 163 Conclusion p. 166 Coda p. 166 Further Reading p. 167 Time, tense and events p. 169 Time and tense p. 170 Simple tense logic p. 172 Some problems p. 176 Event theory p. 180 Types of eventualities p. 182 Tense in English p. 184 Reichenbach's analysis of tenses in English p. 184 Tense in DRT p. 185 Aspect and Aktionsart p. 190 Grammatical aspect p. 191 Lexical aspect p. 192 Representing aspect p. 196 Conclusion p. 205 Further Reading p. 205 Ellipsis as a window on context p. 207 Puzzles at the syntax-semantics interface p. 207 Ellipsis: preliminaries p. 210 Ellipsis: linguistic debates p. 212 Ellipsis: syntactic puzzles p. 214 Ellipsis: semantic challenges p. 216 Ellipsis as pragmatic reconstruction p. 221 Ellipsis: towards a unitary account p. 223 Dynamic Syntax p. 225 The tree-logic and tree-growth processes p. 226 Quantification dynamics and the epsilon calculus p. 232 Ellipsis and context p. 235 Use of context-provided formulae p. 235 Context-provided structure p. 237 Context as a record of parsing actions p. 239 Context defined p. 241 Summary reflections p. 244 Further reading p. 244 What a word can mean p. 246 The Generative Lexicon p. 251 Semantic Minimalism p. 253 Ellipsis and criteria for identity of content p. 254 Variability in word meaning: new avenues of research p. 260 Word meaning as concept-clusters p. 260 Language as a tool-box p. 264 New directions in semantics p. 269 Semantics and pragmatics p. 270 Coda p. 272 Further reading p. 273 Bibliography p. 275 Index p. 285 Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Ronnie Cann is a Reader in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at the University of Edinburgh. Ruth Kempson is a Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Philosophy at King's College London. Eleni Gregoromichelaki is a Research Associate in the Department of Philosophy at King's College London.

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