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Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

Print Price: $126.50

Format:
Paperback
936 pp.
36 line illus., 251 mm x 178 mm

ISBN-13:
9780195136982

Publication date:
November 2004

Imprint: OUP US


Semantics

A Reader

Edited by Steven Davis and Brendan S. Gillon

Semantics: A Reader contains a broad selection of classic articles on semantics and the semantics/pragmatics interface. Comprehensive in the variety and breadth of theoretical frameworks and topics that it covers, it includes articles representative of the major theoretical frameworks within semantics, including: discourse representation theory, dynamic predicate logic, truth theoretic semantics, event semantics, situation semantics, and cognitive semantics.

All the major topics in semantics are covered, including lexical semantics and the semantics of quantified noun phrases, adverbs, adjectives, performatives, and interrogatives. Included are classic papers in the field of semantics as well as papers written especially for the volume. The volume comes with an extensive introduction designed not only to provide an overview of the field, but also to explain the technical concepts the beginner will need to tackle before the more demanding articles. Semantics will have appeal as a textbook for upper level and graduate courses and as a reference for scholars of semantics who want the classic articles in their field in one convenient place.

Reviews

  • "The volume will be of great use for anyone working in semantics. I recommend also its use for teaching purposes, for it contains the most important illustrations of virtually all the topics one may want to address in a course in semantics."--Linguist List 16.1589

Contributors
Part I. IntroductionSteven Davis and Brendan S. Gillon:
1. Preliminaries
2. Linguistics and Typology
3. Linguistics and Logic
4. Theories of Reference and Theories of Meaning
5. Internalist and Externalist Semantic Theories
6. Semantics and Context
7. Conclusion
8. Appendix

Part II. Background
9. Francis Jeffry Pelletier: The Principle of Semantic Compositionality
10. Brendan S. Gillon : Ambiguity, Indeterminacy, Deixis, and Vagueness: Evidence and Theory

Part III. Approaches
11. David Lewis: General Semantics
12. Donald Davidson: Truth and Meaning
13. Hans Kamp: A Theory of Truth and Semantic Representation
14. Jeroen Groenendijk and Martin Stokhof: Dynamic Predicate Logic
15. Jon Barwise and John Perry: Situations and Attitudes
16. Ray Jackendoff: What Is a Concept, That a Person May Grasp It?
17. Gilles Fauconnier : Mental Spaces, Language Modalities, and Conceptual Integration

Part IV. Topics
18. James Pustejovsky: The Generative Lexicon
19. Brendan S. Gillon: Towards a Common Semantics for English Count and Mass Nouns
20. Tyler Burge: Reference and Proper Names
21. Gareth Evans: Pronouns
22. James Higginbotham: Pronouns and Bound Variables
23. Jon Barwise and Robin Cooper: Generalized Quantifiers and Natural Language
24. Hans Reichenbach: The Tenses of Verbs
25. Barbara Hall Partee: Some Structural Analogies between Tenses and Pronouns in English
26. J. A. W. (Hans) Kamp: Two Theories about Adjectives
27. Max J. Cresswell: Prepositions and Points of View
28. Irena Bellert: On Semantic and Distributional Properties of Sentential Adverbs
29. Richmond H. Thomason and Robert C. Stalnaker: A Semantic Theory of Adverbs
30. David Lewis: Adverbs of Quantification
31. Roland Posner: Semantics and Pragmatics of Sentence Connectives in Natural Language
32. Gerald Gazdar: A Cross-Categorial Semantics for Coordination
33. R. E. (Ray) Jennings: The Means of Connectives
34. James Higginbotham: Interrogatives
35. Daniel Vanderveken: Success, Satisfaction, and Truth in the Logic of Speech Acts and Formal Semantics
36. Donald Davidson : The Logical Form of Action Sentences

Part V. Context Dependency
37. David Kaplan: Demonstratives
38. Scott Weinstein: Truth and Demonstratives
39. David Lewis: Scorekeeping in a Language Game
40. Robyn Carston: Explicature and Semantics
41. Robert J. Stainton: Quantifier Phrases, Meaningfulness "in Isolation," and Ellipsis
Bibliography
Index

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Steven Davis is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre on Values and Ethics at Carleton University and Brendan S. Gillon is Associate Professor uf Linguistics at McGill University.

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