Flexibility Principles in Boolean Semantics: The Interpretation of Coordination, Plurality, and Scope (repost)
Flexibility Principles in Boolean Semantics: The Interpretation of Coordination, Plurality, and Scope
Publisher: The MIT Press | ISBN 10: 0262232189 | 2002 | PDF | 309 pages | 1.3 MB
Publisher: The MIT Press | ISBN 10: 0262232189 | 2002 | PDF | 309 pages | 1.3 MB
Since the early work of Montague, Boolean semantics and its subfield of generalized quantifier theory have become the model-theoretic foundation for the study of meaning in natural languages. This book uses this framework to develop a new semantic theory of central linguistic phenomena involving coordination, plurality, and scope. The proposed theory makes use of the standard Boolean interpretation of conjunction, a choice-function account of indefinites, and a novel semantics of plurals that is not based on the distributive/collective distinction. The key to unifying these mechanisms is a version of Montagovian semantics that is augmented by flexibility principles: semantic operations that have no counterpart in phonology. This is the first book to cover these areas in a way that is both linguistically comprehensive and formally explicit.