Asher Nicholas. Lexical Meaning in Context: A Web of Words

Cambridge University Press, 2011. — xi, 332 pages. — ISBN: 1107005396.This is a book about the meanings of words and how they can combine to form larger meaningful units, as well as how they can fail to combine when the amalgamation of a predicate and argument would produce what the philosopher Gilbert Ryle called a 'category mistake'. It argues for a theory in which words get assigned both an intension and a type. The book develops a rich system of types and investigates its philosophical and formal implications, for example the abandonment of the classic Church analysis of types that has been used by linguists since Montague. The author integrates fascinating and puzzling observations about lexical meaning into a compositional semantic framework. Adjustments in types are a feature of the compositional process and account for various phenomena including coercion and copredication. This book will be of interest to semanticists, philosophers, logicians and computer scientists alike.Foundations
Lexical Meaning and Predication
Types and presuppositions
Different sorts of predication
The context sensitivity of types
The main points of this book
Types and Lexical Meaning
Questions about types
Distinguishing between types
Strongly intensional types
Two levels of lexical content
Types in the linguistic system
Previous Theories of Predication
The sense enumeration model
Nunberg and sense transfer
Kleiber and metonymic reference
The Generative Lexicon
Recent pragmatic theories of lexical meaning
Theory
Type Composition Logic
Words again
The basic system of types
Lexical entries and type presuppositions
The formal system of predication
A categorial model for types
The Complex Type
A type constructor for dual aspect nouns
Some not-so-good models of • types
The relational interpretation of • types
Subtyping with •
Type Presuppositions in TCL
How to justify complex type presuppositions
Applications
Types and accidentally polysemous terms
Development
Restricted Predication
Landman’s puzzle
More puzzles
Extensional semantics for as phrases
A new puzzle
As constructions in TCL
Proper names in as phrases revisited
An aside on depictives
Rethinking Coercion
Re-examining the data
Coercion and polymorphic types
Discourse and typing
Discourse-based coercions in TCL
Other Coercions
Noise verbs
Coercions from objects to their representations
Freezing
Cars and drivers, books and authors
Verbs of consumption
I want a beer
Evaluative adjectives
Coercions with pluralities
Aspectual coercion and verbal modification
Syntax and Type Transformations
The Genitive
Grinding
Resultative constructions
Nominalization
Evaluating TCL formally
Modification, Coercion, and Loose Talk
Metonymic predications
Material modifiers
Loose talk
Fiction and fictional objects
Metaphorical predication
Generalizations and Conclusions
Integrating ordinary presuppositions
Conclusions: a sea of arrows
Coda