ABSTRACT

Originally published in 1973, this book shows that methods developed for the semantics of systems of formal logic can be successfully applied to problems about the semantics of natural languages; and, moreover, that such methods can take account of features of natural language which have often been thought incapable of formal treatment, such as vagueness, context dependence and metaphorical meaning.

Parts 1 and 2 set out a class of formal languages and their semantics. Parts 3 and 4 show that these formal languages are rich enought to be used in the precise description of natural languages.

Appendices describe some of the concepts discussed in the text.

chapter |10 pages

Introduction

part |2 pages

Part I Propositional Languages

chapter 2|9 pages

Propositional Logics

chapter 3|11 pages

The Metaphysics of Propositions

chapter 4|15 pages

The Structure of Propositions

part |2 pages

Part II Categorial Languages

chapter 5|15 pages

Pure Categorial Languages

chapter 6|13 pages

Abstraction and λ-categorial Languages

chapter 7|16 pages

The Metaphysics of Categorial Languages

chapter 8|16 pages

Pragmatics

part |2 pages

Part III English as a Categorial Language

chapter 9|24 pages

Some Parts of Speech

chapter 10|22 pages

More Parts of Speech

chapter 11|14 pages

Context-dependence in English

part |2 pages

Part IV English as a Natural Language

chapter 12|20 pages

Words and Morphemes

chapter 13|19 pages

Obtaining Natural Languages

chapter 14|13 pages

Meaning and Use