BACKGROUNDThe series Exploration in Semantics is aimed at a more advanced audience, and includes books by prominent authors which, while research oriented, have a tutorial component so they will have some course updake. The books in this series will emphasize topics which would be of interest not only to semanticists but also to scholars in adjacent fields such as philosphy of language, syntax, and computational linguistics, to broaden the potential market.
The books published in this series will be characterized by the following properties:
- Important new research in a topic or topics central to semantics, including, but not restricted to dynamic semantics, aspect, focus, anaphora, and type-shifting.
-A tutorial component which will consist of an introductory or overview chapter, introducing the particular area being treated and situating the new research in the context of the field and of previous research.
-A presentational style which, while not compromising the presentation of the research, will be careful to make the material as accessible as possible to beginning scholars in the field, and also to researchers in adjacent fields such as syntax, philosophy of language, and computational linguistics.
As a result, the books published in the series will become appropriate course material for graduate level courses.
Sales of other books in series:
Title: Structuring Events
Author: Rothstein
Pub Date: 11/03
Life Sales: Global 104 (B) and 472 (P); US 52 (B) and 246 (P)
Price: £60 (B) and £24.99 (P); US $74.95 (B) and $39.95 (P)
Title: Indefinites and the Type of Sets
Author: Landman
Pub Date: 11/03
Life Sales: Global 58 (B) and 387 (P); US 31 (B) and 118 (P)
Price: £60 (B) and £24.99 (P); US $74.95 (B) and $39.95 (P)
Title: Compositionality in Formal Semantics
Author: Partee
Pub Date: 12/03
Life Sales: Global 105 (B) and 463 (P); US 54 (B) and 141 (P)
Price: £60 (B) and £24.99 (P); US $79.95 (B) and $44.95 (P)
MAIN BLURB
The main concern of the book is the status of semantics, in a broad sense: What is the study of meaning? How should it proceed? What can it hope to establish? It also concerns semantics in a narrow sense, i.e., the enterprise of formal semantics in the Montagovian tradition: What kind of enterprise is formal semantics? What are its data, its methods of verification? How does it relate to other disciplines that are concerned with language and meaning (cognitive science, philosophy, anthropology)? The main thesis that is defended in the book is that (formal) semantics, despite its obvious and well-established claims to descriptive and explanatory success, still faces important challenges. Two of them, one philosophical, one empirical, are investigated in this book.
