From Grammar to Meaning The Spontaneous Logicality of Language

In recent years, the study of formal semantics and formal pragmatics has grown tremendously, showing that core aspects of language meaning can be explained by a few principles. These principles are grounded in the logic that is behind - and tightly intertwined with - the grammar of human language. In this book, some of the most prominent figures in linguistics, including Noam Chomsky and Barbara H. Partee, offer new insights into the nature of linguistic meaning and pave the way for the further development of formal semantics and formal pragmatics. Each chapter investigates various dimensions in which the logical nature of human language manifests itself within a language and/or across languages. Phenomena like bare plurals, free choice items, scalar implicatures, intervention effects, and logical operators are investigated in depth and at times cross-linguistically and/or experimentally. This volume will be of interest to scholars working within the fields of semantics, pragmatics, language acquisition and psycholinguistics.

List of contributors; Acknowledgments; List of abbreviations; Introduction Ivano Caponigro and Carlo Cecchetto; Part I. From Grammar to Meaning: Foundational Issues: 1. Portrait of a semanticist as a young man: Gennaro Chierchia 1979–1988 Barbara H. Partee; 2. Notes on denotation and denoting Noam Chomsky; Part II. From Grammar to Meaning: Formal Developments, New Findings, and Challenges: 3. On the existential force of bare plurals across languages Veneeta Dayal; 4. Broaden your views, but try to stay focussed: a missing piece in the polarity system Anamaria Fălăuş; 5. On the free choice potential of epistemic and deontic modals Maria Aloni and Michael Franke; 6. Implicatures of modified numerals Clemens Mayr; 7. A scalar semantics for scalar readings of number words Christopher Kennedy; 8. Presuposition projection from quantificational sentences: trivalence, local accommodation, and presupposition strengthening Danny Fox; Part III. From Grammar to Meaning: Experimental Insights: 9. Unification in child language Stephen Crain and Rosalind Thornton; 10. Acquisition meets comparison: an investigation of gradable adjectives Francesca Panzeri, Francesca Foppolo and Maria Teresa Guasti; 11. Intervention in grammar and processing Adriana Belletti and Luigi Rizzi; Appendix A. Gennaro Chierchia's list of publications; Appendix B. 'Logic and Linguistics: A Marriage of Inconvenience'; References; Index of names; Index of subjects.

Ivano Caponigro is an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, San Diego.
Carlo Cecchetto is a Full Professor in the Department of Psychology at Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca.