Dowty David R. Word Meaning and Montague Grammar: The Semantics of Verbs and Times in Generative Semantics and in Montague's PTQ

D. Reidel, 1979. — xvii, 415. — (Synthese Language Library). — ISBN: 90-277-1008-2; ISBN: 90-277-1009-0.The most general goal of this book is to propose and illustrate a program of research in word semantics that combines some of the methodology and results in linguistic semantics, primarily that of the generative semantics school, with the rigorously formalized syntactic and semantic framework for the analysis of natural languages developed by Richard Montague and his associates, a framework in which truth and denotation with respect to a model are taken as the fundamental semantic notions. I hope to show, both from the linguist's and the philosopher's point of view, not only why this synthesis can be undertaken but also why it will be useful to pursue it. On the one hand, the linguists' decompositions of word meanings into more primitive parts are by themselves inherently incomplete, in that they deal only in distinctions in meaning without providing an account of what mean ings really are. Not only can these analyses be made complete by a model theoretic semantics, but also such an account of these analyses renders them more exact and more readily testable than they could ever be otherwise.Montague's General Theory of Languages and Linguistic Theories of Syntax and Semantics
The meaning of "Universal" in "Universal Grammar"
Syntax in the UG Theory and in Linguistic Theories
Semantics in UG
Interpretation by Means of' Translation
Preliminaries to the Analysis of Word Meaning
The Semantics of Aspectual Classes of Verbs in English
The Development of Decomposition Analysis in Generative Semantics
The Aristotle-Ryle-Kenny-Vendler Verb Classification
An Aspect Calculus
The Aspect Calculus as Restricting Possible Word Meanings
Interval Semantics and the Progressive Tense
The Imperfective Paradox
Truth Conditions Relative to Intervals, not Moments
Revised Truth Conditions for BECOME
Truth Conditions for the Progressive
Motivating the Progressive Analysis Independently of Accomplishment Sentences
On the Notion of 'likeness' Among Possible Worlds
Extending the Analysis to the "Futurate Progressive"
Another Look at the Vendler Classification in an Interval-Based Semantics
Lexical Decomposition in Montague Grammar
Existing "Lexical Decomposition" in the PTQ Grammar
The General Form of Decomposition Translations: Lambda Abstraction vs. Predicate Raising
Morphologically Derived Causatives and Inchoatives
Prepositional Phrase Accomplishments
Accomplishments with Two Prepositional Phrases
Prepositional Phrase Adjuncts vs. Prepositional Phrase Complements
Factitive Constructions
Periphrastic Causatives
By-Phrases in Accomplishment Sentences
Causative Constructions in Other Languages
Linguistic Evidence for the Two Strategies of Lexical Decomposition
Arguments that Constraints on Syntactic Rules Rule Out "Impossible" Lexical Items
Arguments that Familiar Transformations Also Apply Pre-Lexically
Pronominalization of Parts of Lexical Items
Scope Ambiguities with Almost
Scope Ambiguities with Adverbs: /fave-Deletion Cases
Scope Ambiguities with Adverbs: Accomplishment Cases
Arguments from Re- and Reversative Un-
Accommodating the Adverb Scope Data in a PTQ Grammar
Overpredictions of the Generative Semantics Hypothesis
Concluding Evaluation
The Syntax and Semantics of Word Formation: Lexical Rules
Montague's Program and Lexical Rules
A Lexical Component For a Montague Grammar
Lexical Rules and Morphology
Lexical Rules and Syntax
Examples of Lexical Rules
Problems for Research in the Pragmatics and in the Semantics of Word Formation
The Syntax and Semantics of Tenses and Time Adverbials in English: An English Fragment
The Syncategorematic Nature of Tense-Time Adverbial Interaction
Rules for "Main Tense" Adverbials
Aspectual Adverbials: For an Hour and In an Hour
The Syntactic Structure of the Auxiliary
The Present Perfect
Negation
An English Fragment
Intensions and Psychological Reality