Natural Language Semantics: Formation and Valuation (The MIT Press)

An introduction to natural language semantics that offers an overview of the empirical domain and an explanation of the mathematical concepts that underpin the discipline.

This textbook offers a comprehensive introduction to the fundamentals of those approaches to natural language semantics that use the insights of logic. Many other texts on the subject focus on presenting a particular theory of natural language semantics. This text instead offers an overview of the empirical domain (drawn largely from standard descriptive grammars of English) as well as the mathematical tools that are applied to it. Readers are shown where the concepts of logic apply, where they fail to apply, and where they might apply, if suitably adjusted.

The presentation of logic is completely self-contained, with concepts of logic used in the book presented in all the necessary detail. This includes propositional logic, first order predicate logic, generalized quantifier theory, and the Lambek and Lambda calculi. The chapters on logic are paired with chapters on English grammar. For example, the chapter on propositional logic is paired with a chapter on the grammar of coordination and subordination of English clauses; the chapter on predicate logic is paired with a chapter on the grammar of simple, independent English clauses; and so on.
The book includes more than five hundred exercises, not only for the mathematical concepts introduced, but also for their application to the analysis of natural language. The latter exercises include some aimed at helping the reader to understand how to formulate and test hypotheses.

一本介紹自然語言語義學的入門書，提供了對實證領域的概述，並解釋了支撐該學科的數學概念。

這本教科書全面介紹了使用邏輯洞察的自然語言語義學方法的基礎知識。許多其他關於這個主題的書籍著重於介紹特定的自然語言語義學理論。相反，這本書提供了對實證領域的概述（主要來自標準英語描述語法）以及應用於該領域的數學工具。讀者將了解到邏輯概念適用的範圍，不適用的範圍以及在適當調整的情況下可能適用的範圍。

書中對邏輯的介紹是完全自包含的，書中使用的邏輯概念都有詳細的解釋。這包括命題邏輯、一階謂詞邏輯、廣義量詞理論以及Lambek和Lambda演算。邏輯章節與英語語法章節相對應。例如，命題邏輯章節與英語子句的協調和從屬語法章節相對應；謂詞邏輯章節與簡單、獨立的英語子句的語法章節相對應，依此類推。

這本書包含了五百多個練習題，不僅涵蓋了介紹的數學概念，還包括了對自然語言分析的應用。後者的練習題包括一些旨在幫助讀者理解如何制定和測試假設的練習題。