Formal Semantics: The Essential Readings (Linguistics: The Essential Readings) [Paperback]

Paul Portner (Author), Barbara H. Partee (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0631215425 | ISBN-13: 978-0631215424 | Publication Date: October 21, 2002 | Edition: 1

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

Editorial Reviews

Review

"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 Back Cover

The formal semantics approach to the study of natural language semantics was developed through active dialogue between linguistically minded philosophers and philosophically minded linguists and has become increasingly integrated into theoretical linguistics. Formal Semantics: The Essential Readings is a collection of seminal papers that have shaped the field of formal semantics in linguistics.

The book covers key central themes and includes both an editorial introduction and extensive references. It is a vital resource for students and scholars of semantics and the philosophy of language.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 496 pages
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell; 1 edition (October 21, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0631215425
• ISBN-13: 978-0631215424
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.7 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,178,543 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars nice collection, May 29, 2003

By 

Seth Y. (Oakland, CA USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Formal Semantics: The Essential Readings (Linguistics: The Essential Readings) (Paperback)

Here's what's in it:

1. The Proper Treatment of Quantification in Ordinary English:
Richard Montague.
2. A unified analysis of the English bare plural: Greg Carlson.
3. Generalized quantifiers and natural language: Jon Barwise and Robin Cooper.
4. The Logical Analysis of Plurals and Mass Terms: Godehard Link.
5. Assertion: Robert C. Stalnaker.
6. Scorekeeping in a Language Game: David Lewis.
7. Adverbs of quantification: David Lewis.
8. A theory of truth and semantic representation: Hans Kamp.
9. File change semantics and the familiarity theory of definiteness:
Irene Heim.
10. On the projection problem for presuppositions: Irene Heim.
11. Toward a semantic analysis of verb aspect and the English 'imperfective'
progressive: David R. Dowty.
12. The notional category of modality: Angelika Kratzer.
13. The algebra of events: Emmon Bach.
14. Generalized conjunction and type ambiguity: Barbara Partee and Mats Rooth.
15. Noun phrase interpretation and type shifting principles: Barbara
H. Partee.
16. Syntax and semantics of questions: Lauri Karttunen.
17. Type-Shifting Rules and the Semantics of Interrogatives: Jeroen
Groenendijk and Martin Stokhof.
18. On the notion affective in the analysis of Negative-Polarity Items:
William A. Ladusaw. Index.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Is There A Time-Frame On Which This Is A Cheap Book? Yes, January 28, 2004

By 

Jeffrey Rubard (Beaverton, OR US) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Formal Semantics: The Essential Readings (Linguistics: The Essential Readings) (Paperback)

In *Formal Semantics: The Essential Readings*, Paul Portner and Barbara Partee have collected the fruits of 30 years of research by linguists and logicians into the formal structure of natural language. And as this work has previously been exceptionally difficult to acquire (including the late Richard Montague's seminal "Proper Treatment of Quantification in Ordinary English") even the rather high sticker price of this volume is justified in terms of the historical and contemporary relevance of that particular essay alone (much of the work contained within this volume was influenced *in the main* by Montague Grammar).

The book also contains original statements by Hans Kamp and Irene Heim on dynamic semantic theory, a trend of recent years which perhaps deserves to be revisited (the work done by Groenendijk and Stokhof in particular is much more fully articulated than one might be led to believe, and the virtues of "static semantics" perhaps somewhat other than Davidsonians might think), as well as classic essays by David Lewis, Robert Stalnaker and Emmon Bach. Is semantics possible? Yes, but this volume will not answer the question of in what respect it is necessary, and as such it is exemplary of one of Montagovianism's chief virtues.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Great Collection of Classics, January 3, 2007

By 

Benjamin Van Durme - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Formal Semantics: The Essential Readings (Linguistics: The Essential Readings) (Paperback)

This is a great book if you are part of a younger generation that did not grow up professionally while these papers were first being written/discussed. A few selections seem out of place, or perhaps are not quite as foundational as others, but overall it is a collection well worth having. Read from beginning to end you will have a basic handle on a large number of central topics in semantics.

As a primer I recommend "Introduction to Montague Semantics" by Dowty, Wall, and Peters. Most papers within "... The Essential Readings" take for granted an understanding of PTQ theory that is historically hard to acquire just based off Montegue's original paper (which is included as Chapter 1 of "... The Essential Readings").