Informal Lectures on Formal Semantics

Emmon Bach is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

"Books like this do not come along often. A true authority in this field has taken the time to write a non-technical introduction. No introduction of this kind is likely to be written by anyone else." — David Dowty, Ohio State University"This work is a superb and exciting introduction to modern formal semantic theory. Bach succeeds in doing something which I wouldn't have thought possible: he gives a non-technical overview of the scope of semantic theory, of many of its interesting results, and of the kinds of questions it deals with." — Pauline Jacobson, Brown University

• ForewordLecture I. Background and BeginningLecture II. Worlds Enough and TimeLecture III. Nouns and Noun PhrasesLecture IV. Generalized QuantifiersLecture V. Kinds of ThingsLecture VI. Properties and Other MattersLecture VII. Situations and Other Smaller WorldsLecture VIII. Odds and EndingsNotesReferencesIndex