20.1635, Books: Semantics/Ling Theories: Bunt

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LINGUIST List: Vol-20-1635. Tue Apr 28 2009. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 20.1635, Books: Semantics/Ling Theories: Bunt

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1)
Date: 27-Apr-2009
From: Daniel Davies < ddavies at cambridge.org >
Subject: Mass Terms and Model-Theoretic Semantics: Bunt
 

	
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Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 22:06:39
From: Daniel Davies [ddavies at cambridge.org]
Subject: Mass Terms and Model-Theoretic Semantics: Bunt

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Title: Mass Terms and Model-Theoretic Semantics 
Series Title: Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 42  

Publication Year: 2009 
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
	   http://us.cambridge.org
	
Author: Harry C. Bunt

Paperback: ISBN:  9780521105910 Pages:  Price: U.K. £ 31.99
Paperback: ISBN:  9780521105910 Pages:  Price: U.S. $ 58.00


Abstract:

'Mass terms' like water, rice and traffic, have proved very difficult to
accommodate in any theory of meaning since, unlike count nouns such as
house or dog, they cannot be treated as denoting sets of individuals. In
this study, motivated by the need to design a computer program for
understanding natural language utterances containing mass terms, Harry Bunt
provides a thorough analysis of the problem and offers an original and
detailed solution. An extension of classical set theory, Ensemble Theory,
is defined. This provides the formal basis of a framework for the analysis
of natural language meaning which Dr. Bunt calls two-level model-theoretic
semantics. The validity of the framework is convincingly demonstrated by
the detailed analysis of a fragment of English including sentences with
quantified and modified mass terms. This significant advance in our
understanding of the formal syntactic and semantic properties of mass terms
will be of interest not only to linguists and logicians, but also to all
those concerned with the processing of natural language. 



Preface; 

Part I. Model-Theoretic Semantics of Mass Terms: 
1. Introduction; 
2. Mass terms; 
3. Approaches to mass term semantics; 
4. Towards a semantic theory of mass nouns; 
5. Ensemble theory; 
6. Semantic representations based on ensemble theory; 
7. Two-level model-theoretic semantics; 
8. Quantification and mass nouns; 
9. Modification and mass nouns; 

Part II. Ensemble Theory: 
10. Axiomatic ensemble theory; 
11. Continuous, discrete and mixed ensembles; 
12. A model for ensemble theory; 
13. Ensemble theory, set theory and mereology; 
Notes; 
Bibliography; 
Index. 


Linguistic Field(s): Linguistic Theories
                     Semantics


Written In: English  (eng)
	
See this book announcement on our website: 
http://linguistlist.org/get-book.html?BookID=41301


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