Kamp Hans, Reyle Uwe. From Discourse to Logic: Introduction to Modeltheoretic Semantics of Natural Language, Formal Logic and Discourse Representation Theory

Springer Science+Business Media, 1993., — (Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy). — ISBN: 978-94-017-1616-1.This is the first textbook that approaches natural language semantics and logic from the perspective of Discourse Representation Theory, an approach which emphasizes the dynamic and incremental aspects of meaning and inference.The book has been carefully designed for the classroom. It is aimeu at students with varying degrees of preparation, including those without prior exposure to semantics or formal logic. Moreover, it should make DRT easily accessible to those who want to learn about the theory on their own. Exercises are available to test understanding as well as to encourage independent theoretical thought.The book serves a double purpose. Besides a textbook, it is also the first comprehensive and fully explicit statement of DRT a ilable in the form of a book.From Discourse to Logic develops the basic principles of DRT for a small fragment of English (but which has nevertheless the power of standard predicate logic). The book extends this fragment by adding plurals; it discusses a wide variety of problems connected with plural nouns and verbs. It applies the theory to the analysis of tense and aspect. Many of the problems raised are novel, as are the solutions proposed.AudienceUndergraduate and graduate students interested in linguistics, theoretical linguistics, computational linguistics, artificial intelligence and cognitive science. Suitable for students with no previous exposure to formal semantics or logic.