Introduction to Natural Language Semantics

This introduction examines the semantics of natural languages.

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This introduction is concerned with the semantics of natural languages. The text examines what issues semantics, as a theory of meaning, should address: determining what the meanings of words of the language are and how to semantically combine elements of a language to build up complex meanings. Logical languages are then developed as formal metalanguages to natural language. Subsequent chapters address propositional logic, the syntax and semantics of (first-order) predicate logic as an extension of propositional logic, and generalized quantifier theory. Going beyond extensional theory, de Swart relativizes the interpretation of expressions to times to account for verbal tense, time adverbials, and temporal connectives, and introduces possible worlds to modal intensions, modal adverbs, and modal auxiliaries.