In ordinary discourse we appear to ta1k about many things that have seemed mysterious to philosophers. We say that there has been a hitch in our arrangements or that the solution to the problem required us to examine all the probable outcomes of our action. So it would seem that we speak as if in addition to eloeks, mountains, queens and grains of sand there are hitches, arrangements, solutions, probiems, and probable outcomes. It is not immediately obvious when we must take such ta1k as really assuming that there are such to develop tests for things, and one of the tasks in this book is...

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...

One of the most spectacular discoveries of molecular astronomy has been the detection of maser emission. The same radiation that is generated in the laboratory only with elaborate, special equipment occurs naturally in interstellar space. This intense radiation probes the smallest structures that can be studied with radio telescopes. By a fortunate coincidence maser radiation is generated in both star forming regions and the envelopes of late-type stars. The early and late stages in the life of a star are considered to be the most interesting phases of stellar evolution. Maser emission has...

Formalization plays an important role in semantics. Doing semantics and following the literature requires considerable technical sophistica- tion and acquaintance with quite advanced mathematical techniques and structures. But semantics isn't mathematics. These techniques and structures are tools that help us build semantic theories. Our real aim is to understand semantic phenomena and we need the technique to make our understanding of these phenomena precise. The problems in semantics are most often too hard and slippery, to completely trust our informal understanding of them. This should...

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...

At a superficial examination, English has different types of nominals with similar meaning and distribution: (1)a. John's performance ofthe song b. J ohn' s performing of the song c. John's performing the song d. the fact that John performs the song These nominals are also perceived by English speakers to be related to the same sentential construction: (2) John performs the song A more accurate inspection reveals, however, that the nominals in (1) differ both in their distribution and in the range of interpretations they allow. An adequate theory of nominalization should explicate rigorously...

All work is work in progress. The ideas developed in this work could be (and probably will be) developed further, revised, and expanded. But it was time to write them down and send them out. Some of these ideas about linking had their origins in my 1987 dissertation. However, this work has grown beyond the dissertation in a number of important ways. The most important of these advances lie in, first, articulating aspectual roles as linguistic objects over which lexical semantic phenomena can be stated, and over which linking generalizations are stated; second, recognizing that syntactic...

Part I of this book presents a theory of modal metaphysics in the possible-worlds tradition. Worlds' themselves are understood as structured sets of properties; this Ersatzist' view is defended against its most vigorous competitors, Meinongianism and David Lewis' theory of existent concrete worlds. Related issues of essentialism and linguistic reference are explored.
Part II takes up the question of lexical meaning in the context of possible-world semantics. There are skeptical analyses of analyticity and the notion of a logical constant; and an infinite polysemy' thesis is defended....

This volume of papers grew out of a research project on "Cross-Linguistic Quantification" originated by Emmon Bach, Angelika Kratzer and Barbara Partee in 1987 at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and supported by National Science Foundation Grant BNS 871999. The publication also reflects directly or indirectly several other related activ- ities. Bach, Kratzer, and Partee organized a two-evening symposium on cross-linguistic quantification at the 1988 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in New Orleans (held without financial support) in order to bring the project to...