Compositionality in Formal Semantics: Selected Papers

Barbara H. Partee has played a central role in developing the now–flourishing field of formal semantics, bringing the formal semantic approach developed by logicians together with a linguistically sophisticated account of the syntax of natural languages. She has continued to be a major contributor to semantics, offering general ideas that have helped to clarify the character of the enterprise as well as imaginative and persuasive detailed analyses. Compositionality in Formal Semantics is a collection of Partee’s papers that have been influential in the field but are not all readily available, and includes a new introductory essay in which Partee reflects on how her thinking and the field of semantics have developed over the past 35 years. This collection is invaluable both for understanding the history and evolution of the field and for its contribution to ongoing research.

Acknowledgments. 1. Reflections of a Formal Semanticist. 2. Opacity, Coreference, and Pronouns. 3. Some Structural Analogies Between Tenses and Pronouns in English. 4. Toward the Logic of Tense and Aspect in English (with Michael Bennett). 5. Bound Variables and Other Anaphors. 6. Anaphora and Semantic Structure (with Emmon Bach). 7. Compositionality. 8. Appendix B. Genitives – A case study. 9. Ambiguous Pseudoclefts with Unambiguous Be . 10. Noun Phrase Interpretation and Type–Shifting Principles. 11. The Airport Squib: Any , Almost , and superlatives. 12. Many Quantifiers. 13. Binding Implicit Variables in Quantified Contexts. 14. Weak NPs in HAVE Sentences. 15. Some Puzzles of Predicate Possessives (with Vladimir Borschev). Index.

Barbara H. Partee is Distinguished University Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst, and is the author of several landmark essays in formal semantics. She has written and edited numerous books, including Formal Semantics: The Essential Readings (edited with Paul Portner, Blackwell, 2002), Mathematical Methods in Linguistics (with Alice ter Meulen and Robert Wall, 1990), and Montague Grammar (edited, 1976).

"Barbara H. Partee is the founding mother of linguistic semantics as it is practiced today, and this collection of many of her classic papers shows why she has been so influential. The combination of theoretical insight with her legendary ability to find just the right example to make a point is evident throughout. And, as a bonus, the collection begins with a wonderful memoir of the turbulent time when semantics was getting its start." Robert Stalnaker, MIT "Two different audiences will be delighted with this book: those who read the classic papers gathered here when they first appeared and those who did not but are heirs to the rich semantics tradition in formal linguistics that Barbara H. Partee established with those papers and with her irresistible enthusiasm for systematic investigation of linguistic meaning. Partee′s keen semantic insights, her flair for telling examples, her intellectual generosity, her clear–headedness, and her pedagogical talents are evident throughout, not just in the vintage pieces but also in the introductory essay she′s written and in the couple of articles published more recently. This volume belongs on every semanticist′s shelf." Sally McConnell–Ginet, Cornell University