Speech Acts, Mind, and Social Reality - these are the main topics in the work of John R. Searle, one of the leading philosophical figures of the present times. How language is based on intentionality, how intentionality in turn is to be explicated by means of distinctions discovered in Speech Act Theory, and how language and intentionality are both related to social facts and institutions - these are questions to be tackled in this volume. The contributions result from discussions on and with John R. Searle, containing Searle's own latest views - including his seminal ideas...

Geert-Jan Kruijff & Richard T. Oehrle A categorial grammar is both a grammar and a type inference system. As a result of this duality, the categorial framework offers a natural setting in which to study questions of grammatical composition, both empirically and abstractly. There are affinities in this perspective, of course, to basic questions in formal language theory. But the fact that categorial grammars are type in- ference systems makes possible intrinsic connections among syntactic types, syntactic type inference, semantic types, and semantic type inference, a con- nection less apparent...

Geert-Jan Kruijff & Richard T. Oehrle A categorial grammar is both a grammar and a type inference system. As a result of this duality, the categorial framework offers a natural setting in which to study questions of grammatical composition, both empirically and abstractly. There are affinities in this perspective, of course, to basic questions in formal language theory. But the fact that categorial grammars are type in- ference systems makes possible intrinsic connections among syntactic types, syntactic type inference, semantic types, and semantic type inference, a con- nection less apparent...

Over a longer period than I sometimes care to contemplate I have worked on possible-worlds semantics. The earliest work was in modal logic, to which I keep returning, but a sabbatical in 1970 took me to UCLA, there to discover the work of Richard Montague in applying possible-worlds semantics to natural lan- guage. My own version of this appeared in Cresswell (1973) and was followed up in a number of articles, most of which were collected in Cresswell (1985b). A central problem for possible- worlds semantics is how to accommodate propositional attitudes. This problem was addressed in...

The goal of this book is to investigate the semantics of absolute constructions in English; specifically, my object is to provide an explanation for the semantic variability of such constructions. As has been widely noted in traditional grammatical studies of English, free adjuncts and absolute phrases have the ability to playa number of specific logical roles in the sentences in which they appear; yet, paradoxically, they lack any overt indication of their logical connection to the clause which they modify. How, then, is the logical function of an absolute construction determined? In...

Carlota S. Smith was a key figure in linguistic research and a pioneering woman in generative linguistics. This selection of papers focuses on the research into tense, aspect, and discourse that Smith completed while Professor of Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin.

Smith s early work in English syntax is still cited today, and her early career also yielded key research on language acquisition by young children. Starting in the mid-1970s, after her move to UT, she embarked on her most important line of research. In numerous papers the first of which was...

This book is a collection of original research articles on the representation and in- terpretation of indefinite and definite noun phrases, anaphoric pronouns, and closely related issues such as reference, scope and quantifier movement. A variety of frame- works for the formal analysis of discourse semantics are represented, including dis- course representation theory, file change semantics, dynamic Logic, E-type theories, and choice function approaches, which was one of the main issues the Konstanz project were concerned with. All of these frameworks are couched in the tradition of Montague...

Tense, Attitudes, and Scope is a model-theoretic inquiry into the semantics of tense in natural language. The book presents the view that the semantic contribution of tense is made in relation to structurally higher expressions (the relative tense theory') and argues against the view that tenses are all indexicals. This idea is formally encoded as a de se analysis of attitudes, originally proposed by Lewis, coupled with a sequence-of-tense rule posited for English. An auxiliary proposal is made to account for some exceptional cases (e.g. so-called double-access sentences),...

Interrogative Phrases and the Syntax-Semantics Interface starts by analyzing the interpretation of interrogative phrases in single and multiple constituent questions, including their interpretation under adverbs of quantification. The results are then put to work in a novel approach to some of the constraints on dependencies between fronted interrogative phrases and the associated gaps: superiority, weak crossover, as well as the so-called weak islands' (the WH-island, the negative island and the Factive Island). It is argued that the possibility of fronting an interrogative phrase...

Semantic Indexicality shows how a simple syntax can be combined with a propositional language at the level of logical analysis. It is the adoption of such a base language which has not been attempted before, and it is this which constitutes the originality of the book. Cresswell's simple and direct style makes this book accessible to a wider audience than the somewhat specialized subject matter might initially suggest.