I see semantics as one branch of linguistics, which is the study of language: as an area of study parallel to, and interacting with, those syntax and phonology, which deal respectively with the formal patterns of language, and the way in which these are translated into sounds. While syntax and phonology study the structure of expressive possibilities in language, semantics study the meanings that can be expressed. It may convincingly be claimed that viewing semantics as a component discipline of linguistics is the most fruitful and exciting point of departure at the present time. The book of this kind cannot attempt an overall survey of the field of semantics or at least, if it does, it will end up as a superficial compendium of what others have thought about meaning. The only sensible course is to give evidence that linguistics does exist in our life and it is hypocritical not to acknowledge that linguistics is difficult to understand due to its scientificity. Semantics is a non-fiction science through its unique approach to find the meaning of language not by guessing or judging something subjectively. The strength of the integrated view is that it makes possible a transfer to semantics of techniques of analysis which have proved successful with other aspects of language. It has to be conceded that the primary appeal of semantics is an intellectual one, similar in some respects to that of mathematics or any pure science. Only after seeking understanding for understanding’s sake can one acquire the wisdom which consists in using that understanding for good ends.

Quantification is a topic which brings together linguistics, logic, and philosophy. Quantifiers are the essential tools with which, in language or logic, we refer to quantity of things or amount of stuff. In English they include such expressions as no, some, all, both, and many. Peters and Westerstahl present the definitive interdisciplinary exploration of how they work - their syntax, semantics, and inferential role.Quantifiers in Language and Logic is intended for everyone with a scholarly interest in the exact treatment of meaning. It presents a broad view of the semantics and logic of quantifier expressions in natural languages and, to a slightly lesser extent, in logical languages. The authors progress carefully from a fairly elementary level to considerable depth over the course of sixteen chapters; their book will be invaluable to a broad spectrum of readers, from those with a basicknowledge of linguistic semantics and of first-order logic to those with advanced knowledge of semantics, logic, philosophy of language, and knowledge representation in artificial intelligence.

Recent developments in the semantics of natural language seem to lead to a genuine synthesis of ideas from linguistics and logic, producing novel concepts and questions of interest to both parent disciplines. This book is a collection of essays on such new topics, which have arisen over the past few years. Taking a broad view, developments in formal semantics over the past decade can be seen as follows. At the beginning stands Montague's pioneering work, showing how a rigorous semantics can be given for complete fragments of natural language by creating a suitable fit between syntactic categories and semantic types. This very enterprise already dispelled entrenched prejudices concerning the separation of linguistics and logic. Having seen the light, however, there is no reason at all to stick to the letter of Montague's proposals, which are often debatable. Subsequently, then, many improvements have been made upon virtually every aspect of the enterprise. More sophisticated grammars have been inserted (lately, lexical-functional grammar and generalized phrase structure grammar), more sensitive model structures have been developed (lately, 'partial' rather than 'total' in their com position), and even the mechanism of interpretation itself may be fine-tuned more delicately, using various forms of 'representations' mediating between linguistic items and semantic reality. In addition to all these refinements of the semantic format, descriptive coverage has extended considerably.

The Logic of Language opens a new perspective on logic. Pieter Seuren argues that the logic of language derives from the lexical meanings of the logical operators. These meanings, however, prove not to be consistent. Seuren solves this problem through an indepth analysis of the functional adequacy of natural predicate logic and standard modern logic for natural linguistic interaction. He then develops a general theory of discourse-bound interpretation, covering discourse incrementation, anaphora, presupposition and topic-comment structure, all of which, the author claims, form the 'cement' of discourse structure. This is the second of a two-volume foundational study of language, published under the title Language from Within. Pieter Seuren discusses such apparently diverse issues as the ontology underlying the semantics of language, speech act theory, intensionality phenomena, the machinery and ecology of language, sentential and lexical meaning, the natural logic of language and cognition, and the intrinsically context-sensitive nature of language - and shows them to be intimately linked. Throughout his ambitious enterprise, he maintains a constant dialogue with established views, reflecting their development from Ancient Greece to the present. The resulting synthesis concerns central aspects of research and theory in linguistics, philosophy and cognitive science.

Preface This book is about semantics and logic. More specifically, it is about the semantics and logic of natural language; and, even more specifically than that, it is about a particular way of dealing with those subjects, known as Discourse Representation Theory, or DRT. DRT is an approach towards natural language semantics which, some thirteen years ago, arose out of attempts to deal with two distinct problems. The first of those was the semantic puzzle that had been brought to contempo rary attention by Geach's notorious "donkey sentences" - sentences like If Pedro owns some donkey, he beats it, in which the anaphoric connection we perceive between the indefinite noun phrase some donkey and the pronoun it may seem to conflict with the existential meaning of the word some. The second problem had to do with tense and aspect. Some languages, for instance French and the other Romance languages, have two morphologically distinct past tenses, a simple past (the French Passe Simple) and a continuous past (the French Imparfait). To articulate precisely what the difference between these tenses is has turned out to be surprisingly difficult.

Semantic underspecification is an essential and pervasive property of natural language. This monograph provides a comprehensive survey of the various phenomena in the field of ambiguity and vagueness. The book discusses the major theories of semantic indefiniteness, which have been proposed in linguistics, philosophy and computer science. It argues for a view of indefiniteness as the potential for further contextual specification, and proposes a unified logical treatment of indefiniteness on this basis. The inherent inconsistency of natural language induced by irreducible imprecision is investigated, and treated in terms of a dynamic extension of the proposed logic. The book is an extended edition of a German monograph and is addressed to advanced students and researchers in theoretical and computational linguistics, logic, philosophy of language, and NL- oriented AI. Although it makes extensive use of logical formalisms, it requires only some basic familiarity with standard predicate logic concepts since all technical terms are carefully explained.

The second edition of The Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory presents a comprehensive introduction to cutting-edge research in contemporary theoretical and computational semantics. Features completely new content from the first edition of The Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory Features contributions by leading semanticists, who introduce core areas of contemporary semantic research, while discussing current research Suitable for graduate students for courses in semantic theory and for advanced researchers as an introduction to current theoretical work

This is a comprehensive and wide ranging introduction to various approaches to meaning. The book contains a critical discussion of these approaches and gives accessible explanations of relevant terminology.

Ladislav Tondl's insightful investigations into the language of the sciences bear directly upon some decisive points of confrontation in modern philos ophy of science and of language itself. In the decade since his Scientific Procedures was published in English (Boston Studies 11), Dr Tondl has enlarged his original monograph of 1966 on the promise, problems and achievements of modern semantics: the main topic of his later work has been semantic information theory. A Russian translation, considerably expanded as a second edition, was published in 1975 (Moscow, Progress Publishers) with an appreciative critical commentary, in the form of a conclusion, by Professor Avenir I. Uemov of Odessa. Indeed many Soviet studies in the problems of the semantics of science show the same sort of philosophical curiosity about the relationship of meanings in scientific language to pro cedures in scientific epistemology that characterizes Tondl's work, as in the work of Mirislav Popovich (Kiev) and Vadirn Sadovsky (Moscow) and their colleagues. But we know that interest in these matters is world-wide, ranging from such classical topics as sense and denotation, empiricist reduction, vagueness and denotational opacity, to the new and equally exciting topics of the semantics of non-unique preference choices, the nuances of informational synonymity, and the semantics of a picture shape (so briefly but beautifully sketched in Tondl's dense and promising last chapter). We are pleased to have had Tondl's kind cooperation in producing this English edition, actually a third edition, of his research about semantics.