In a fundamental investigation of language and human reasoning, Gennaro Chierchia looks at how syntactic and inferential processes interact through the study of polarity sensitive and free choice items. He reformulates the semantics of focus and scope and the pragmatics of implicature as part of the recursive semantic system.

How is the meaning of natural language interpreted? Taking as its point of departure the logical problem of natural language acquisition, this book elaborates a theory of meaning based on syntactical rather than semantical processes. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

P.F. Strawson has supplied a new introduction for this reissue of his modern classic originally published in 1974. Subject and Predicate in Logic and Grammar explores two conceptions of subject and predicate, one of which lies at the core of standard logic and the other more closely relates to surface forms of natural language. Strawson renders these two conceptions, and their divergences, intelligible by relating them both to the 'basic case' in which the subject-term designates a substantial spatio-temporal individual. Through his treatment of these conceptions, Strawson added to our understanding of both logic and general grammar, helping us trace formal characteristics of logic and its grammar to their roots in general features of thought and experience, and observing how the grammatical structure of a large group of non-formalized languages naturally develops in various ways, along other lines. This book, based originally on seminar material used at Oxford and Princeton and a series of lectures delivered at Irvine and University College London, has become an enduring landmark in the literature of logic and the philosophy of language.

A novel logic-based framework for representing the syntax-semantics interface of natural language, applicable to a range of phenomena. In this book, Yusuke Kubota and Robert Levine propose a type-logical version of categorial grammar as a viable alternative model of natural language syntax and semantics. They show that this novel logic-based framework is applicable to a range of phenomena—especially in the domains of coordination and ellipsis—that have proven problematic for traditional approaches. The type-logical syntax the authors propose takes derivations of natural language sentences to be proofs in a particular kind of logic governing the way words and phrases are combined. This logic builds on and unifies two deductive systems from the tradition of categorial grammar; the resulting system, Hybrid Type-Logical Categorial Grammar (Hybrid TLCG) enables comprehensive approaches to coordination (gapping, dependent cluster coordination, and right-node raising) and ellipsis (VP ellipsis, pseudogapping, and extraction/ellipsis interaction). It captures a number of intricate patterns of interaction between scopal operators and seemingly incomplete constituents that are frequently found in these two empirical domains. Kubota and Levine show that the hybrid calculus underlying their framework incorporates key analytic ideas from competing approaches in the generative syntax literature to offer a unified and systematic treatment of data that have posed considerable difficulties for previous accounts. Their account demonstrates that logic is a powerful tool for analyzing the deeper principles underlying the syntax and semantics of natural language.

Natural languages are riddled with context-sensitivity, yet how do we understand one another so effortlessly? Contrary to the dominant position, this book argues that meaning is determined entirely by discourse conventions, as we draw on a broad array of subtle linguistic conventions that determine the interpretation of context-sensitive items.

Although the two volumes of Logic, Language, and Meaning can be used independently of one another, together they provide a comprehensive overview of modern logic as it is used as a tool in the analysis of natural language. Both volumes provide exercises and their solutions. Volume 1, Introduction to Logic, begins with a historical overview and then offers a thorough introduction to standard propositional and first-order predicate logic. It provides both a syntactic and a semantic approach to inference and validity, and discusses their relationship. Although language and meaning receive special attention, this introduction is also accessible to those with a more general interest in logic. In addition, the volume contains a survey of such topics as definite descriptions, restricted quantification, second-order logic, and many-valued logic. The pragmatic approach to non-truthconditional and conventional implicatures are also discussed. Finally, the relation between logic and formal syntax is treated, and the notions of rewrite rule, automation, grammatical complexity, and language hierarchy are explained.