This indispensable volume contains articles that represent the best of Huang's work on the syntax-semantics interface over the last two decades. It includes three general topics: (a) questions, indefinites and quantification, (b) anaphora, (c) lexical structure and the syntax of events.

During the last thirty years, most linguists and philosophers have assumed that meaning can be represented symbolically and that the mental processing of language involves the manipulation of symbols. Scholars have assembled strong evidence that there must be linguistic representations at several abstract levels—phonological, syntactic, and semantic—and that those representations are related by a describable system of rules. Because meaning is so complex, linguists often posit an equally complex relationship between semantic and other levels of grammar. The Semantics of Syntax is an elegant and powerful analysis of the relationship between syntax and semantics. Noting that meaning is underdetermined by form even in simple cases, Denis Bouchard argues that it is impossible to build knowledge of the world into grammar and still have a describable grammar. He thus proposes simple semantic representations and simple rules to relate linguistic levels. Focusing on a class of French verbs, Bouchard shows how multiple senses can be accounted for by the assumption of a single abstract core meaning along with background information about how objects behave in the world. He demonstrates that this move simplifies the syntax at no cost to the descriptive power of the semantics. In two important final chapters, he examines the consequences of his approach for standard syntactic theories.

In the last decade a profound change has occurred in linguistic science. Not only have old problems been tackled from an entirely new point of view but also quite a few new fields of linguistic research have been opened. The common characteristic of the majority of the theories and methods developed recently is the search for a more adequate description of language. Adequacy does not mean simply that the theory must conform to the facts. It must also meet the general requirements of present-day theories: coherence, clear-cut notions, rigor of presentation. It has also become abundantly clear that linguistic research cannot be content with the registration and classification of linguistic phenomena. In one way or another linguistics must try to explain the deep-seated regularities in language which in general do not appear on the surface in some straightforward way. Therefore, we find the attribute 'deep' very often in contemporary linguistic literature. Linguistic theories seek an explanation for the observed facts in terms of a system of hypotheses about the functioning of language. As research proceeds these will undergo essential changes. Some of them will be waived, others com plemented. The papers of the present volume follow these general principles of linguistic theory though they may differ from each other in the way of presentation considerably. Some of the papers make use of the framework of transformational-generative grammar (e. g. Kuroda; Perlmutter), others approach the pertinent problem from a different angle (e. g. Dupraz and Rouault; Apresyan, Mel'cuk, and Zolkovski).

With this book, readers with a basic grounding in discreet mathematics will be able to understand the practical applications of these difficult concepts. The book presents the typically difficult subject of "formal methods" in an informal, easy-to-follow manner. A "laboratory component" is integrated throughout the text.

A guide to the relations between a predicate and its arguments, for researchers and advanced students in linguistics. Engages foundational issues in both syntax and semantics, with attention to the correspondence between structure at the two levels. Chapters include discussion questions and suggestions for further reading.

This is a collection of papers by leading scholars in the philosophy of language and theoretical linguistics on how semantics and pragmatics embed into a larger theory of interpretation and also on the disputed territories between these disciplines.

The category P belongs to a less studied area in theoretical linguistics, which has only recently attracted considerable attention. This volume brings together pioneering work on adpositions in spatial relations from different theoretical and cross-linguistic perspectives. The common theme in these contributions is the complex semantic and syntactic structure of PPs. Analyses are presented in several different frameworks and approaches, including generative syntax, optimality theoretic semantics and syntax, formal semantics, mathematical modeling, lexical syntax, and pragmatics. Among the languages featured in detail are English, German, Hebrew, Igbo, Italian, Japanese, and Persian. This volume will be of interest to students and researchers of formal semantics, syntax and language typology, as well as scholars with a more general interest in spatial cognition.