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In a fundamental investigation of language and human reasoning, Gennaro Chierchia looks at how syntactic and inferential processes interact through the study of polarity sensitive and free choice items. He reformulates the semantics of focus and scope and the pragmatics of implicature as part of the recursive semantic system.
List of contents
- Introduction
- 1: The Spontaneous Logicality of Language
- 2: Scalar Implicatures at the Interface Between Pragmatics and Syntax
- 3: Even Negative Polarity Items and Only Negative Polarity Items
- 4: Presuppositionality, Strength, and Concord in Polarity Systems
- 5: Existential Free Choice
- 6: Universal Free Choice
- 7: Intervention
- 8: Where We Stand
- References
About the author
Gennaro Chierchia is Haas Foundations Professor of Linguistic at Harvard University. He taught previously at Brown, Cornell, and at the University of Milan-Bicocca. He has published extensively on semantics and its interfaces with syntax, pragmatics, and psycholinguistics. His books include Dynamics of Meaning: Anaphora, Presupposition, and the Theory of Grammar (Chicago 1995) and, with Sally McConnell-Ginet, Meaning and Grammar: An Introduction to Semantics (MIT 1990; 2nd edn 2000). His books are translated into Italian, Korean, and Portuguese.
Summary
In a fundamental investigation of language and human reasoning, Gennaro Chierchia looks at how syntactic and inferential processes interact through the study of polarity sensitive and free choice items. He reformulates the semantics of focus and scope and the pragmatics of implicature as part of the recursive semantic system.
