Formal Pragmatics: Semantics, Pragmatics, Presupposition, and Focus

Formal Pragmatics addresses issues that are on the borderline of the semantics and pragmatics of natural language, from the point of view of a model–theoretic semanticist. This up–to–date resource covers a substantial body of formal work on linguistic phenomena, and presents the way the semantics–pragmatics interface has come to be viewed today. Introduces Discourse Representation Theory and File Change Semantics, with their formal representation of context and context change. Covers presupposition, including the nature and status of presuppositions as well as presupposition projection. Deals with focus, its prosodic manifestation, and the model–theoretic analysis of its meaning and function. This volume, which serves as a textbook, as well as a reference or research book, offers a detailed discussion of key issues and clearly explains important, cutting–edge research.

Acknowledgments. Introduction. 1. Preliminaries. Part I: Dynamic Semantics, Definites and Indefinites: . 2. Discourse Representation Theory and File Change Semantics. 3. NPs with Numeral Determiners. 4. Semantics and Pragmatics with Definite NPs. Part II: Presupposition: . 5. Presupposition Projection: The Basic Analysis. 6. Presupposition Projection: Filtering vs. Cancellation. 7. Presupposition Projection: Interlude. 8. Presupposition Projection: Negation, Shifts in Contextual Assumptions, and Metalinguistic Operators. 9. Presupposition Projection and Accommodation. 10. More on PS Projection and Accommodation: PS Projection Below the Level of the Clause. 11. Presupposition Triggering and the Behavior of Presuppositions. Part III: Focus: . 12. Some Basics of the Phonology of Prosody. 13. Focus and Focus Identification. 14. Focus: Focus–Induced Interpretations. 15. Problems with Focus–Induced Interpretations. 16. Association With Focus: The ′Domain Selection′/′Free Parameter′ Analysis. 17. Focus: The More Complete Analysis. 18. Focus–Induced Interpretations: Some Theoretical Choices to be Made. 19. Focus and Scope. 20. Complex Focal Structures with ′Contrastive Topics′. 21. Focus and Presupposition: The Focal Presupposition and Its Interaction with Other Presuppositions. References. Index.

Nirit Kadmon is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics at Tel Aviv University. She graduated from Tel Aviv University in 1981, and went on to receive her Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1987.

"This is a very special book in that it creates formal pragmatics as a field in its own right. There hasn′t been anything like it so far. I used to tack on a little bit of pragmatics to my semantics classes, but this will now change." Angelika Kratzer, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.