Compositionality in Formal Semantics: Selected Papers / Edition 1

by Barbara H. Partee

Overview

Compositionality in Formal Semantics is a collection of Barbara Partee’s papers that have been influential in the field but are not readily available and includes a new introductory essay in which Partee reflects on how her thinking and the field of semantics have developed over the past 35 years.

• Brings together, in one volume, influential but difficult to find papers by one of the most important researchers in formal semantics.
• Includes a new introductory essay in which Partee reflects on how her research and the field of semantics have developed over the past 35 years.
• Discusses critical themes in semantic theory.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781405109352
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	01/16/2004
Series:	Explorations in Semantics , #1
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.80(w) x 9.70(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Barbara H. Partee is Distinguished University Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst, and is the author of several landmark essays in formal semantics. She has written and edited numerous books, including Formal Semantics: The Essential Readings (edited with Paul Portner, Blackwell, 2002), Mathematical Methods in Linguistics (with Alice ter Meulen and Robert Wall, 1990), and Montague Grammar (edited, 1976).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

1 Reflections of a Formal Semanticist 1

2 Opacity, Coreference, and Pronouns 26

3 Some Structural Analogies Between Tenses and Pronouns in English 50

4 Toward the Logic of Tense and Aspect in English with Michael Bennett 59

5 Bound Variables and Other Anaphors 110

6 Anaphora and Semantic Structure with Emmon Bach 122

7 Compositionality 153

8 Appendix B Genitives – A case study 182

9 Ambiguous Pseudoclefts with Unambiguous Be 190

10 Noun Phrase Interpretation and Type-Shifting Principles 203

11 The Airport Squib: Any, Almost, and superlatives 231

12 Many Quantifiers 241

13 Binding Implicit Variables in Quantified Contexts 259

14 Weak NPs in HAVE Sentences 282

15 Some Puzzles of Predicate Possessives with Vladimir Borschev 292

Index 316

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Barbara H. Partee is the founding mother of linguistic semantics as it is practiced today, and this collection of many of her classic papers shows why she has been so influential. The combination of theoretical insight with her legendary ability to find just the right example to make a point is evident throughout. And, as a bonus, the collection begins with a wonderful memoir of the turbulent time when semantics was getting its start." Robert Stalnaker, MIT

"Two different audiences will be delighted with this book: those who read the classic papers gathered here when they first appeared and those who did not but are heirs to the rich semantics tradition in formal linguistics that Barbara H. Partee established with those papers and with her irresistible enthusiasm for systematic investigation of linguistic meaning. Partee's keen semantic insights, her flair for telling examples, her intellectual generosity, her clear-headedness, and her pedagogical talents are evident throughout, not just in the vintage pieces but also in the introductory essay she's written and in the couple of articles published more recently. This volume belongs on every semanticist's shelf." Sally McConnell-Ginet, Cornell University

Editorial Reviews

"Barbara H. Partee is the founding mother of linguistic semantics as it is practiced today, and this collection of many of her classic papers shows why she has been so influential. The combination of theoretical insight with her legendary ability to find just the right example to make a point is evident throughout. And, as a bonus, the collection begins with a wonderful memoir of the turbulent time when semantics was getting its start." Robert Stalnaker, MIT

"Two different audiences will be delighted with this book: those who read the classic papers gathered here when they first appeared and those who did not but are heirs to the rich semantics tradition in formal linguistics that Barbara H. Partee established with those papers and with her irresistible enthusiasm for systematic investigation of linguistic meaning. Partee's keen semantic insights, her flair for telling examples, her intellectual generosity, her clear-headedness, and her pedagogical talents are evident throughout, not just in the vintage pieces but also in the introductory essay she's written and in the couple of articles published more recently. This volume belongs on every semanticist's shelf." Sally McConnell-Ginet, Cornell University

From the Publisher